Author: Richard Denton, MD
Disclaimer: I am a medical doctor and will concentrate on the medical aspects. I have no conflict of interest as some nuclear physicists might who are paid by the nuclear industry.
Radiation is one of the six crises that this Platform addresses; each one could annihilate civilization as we know it. Radiation could do so in either an acute or chronic manner. The acute effects would come from a major accident, miscalculation, or terrorist attack or an actual nuclear war. The chronic effects are killing by inducing cancers and other medical conditions.
Radiation exposure is of course related to the other five global threat scenarios. Radiation is interconnected as part of a nuclear war that would immediately kill millions from radiation. A nuclear bomb is not just a bigger better bomb but emits radiation that kills locally and at a distance over time. Because of its power, it would put dust and smoke into the stratosphere that would cause a decrease of the sun’s penetration. A “nuclear winter” would result, causing death of millions by famine. Some people suggest that nuclear power is “green” —even the answer to climate change. But nuclear power plants could be a target of terrorists using cyberwarfare or crashing an airliner into a reactor.
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Radiation is like Yin and Yang. It has detrimental effects—causing cancers, etc. — but also beneficial effects, as in helping make diagnoses through X-rays and nuclear imaging and also in treating cancers. Ionizing radiation has the ability to break apart molecules like DNA. There are different types of ionizing radiation: alpha and beta are weak energy but potent if taken internally, while X-rays and gamma radiation have strong energy and can kill acutely people as well as cancers, or can be used externally in diagnosis.
There are several principles that apply to radiation in humans. Radiation accumulates in the body and acts over time. Even small doses of radiation can become significant if one is exposed to them all the time. Radiation comes from several sources: background (about one to three milliSieverts, although it can be higher in specific regions) that affects us all, such as from the sun, or the ground such as radon gas that is the number two cause of lung cancer in Canada. We are also exposed individually when we get an X-ray or fly in an airplane.
If a food source that has been contaminated with radiation is eaten, it is absorbed by the organism that devours it. Thus, radiation is concentrated up the food chain. We humans are at the top of the food chain. We thus concentrate radiation over time.
People vary in their susceptibility, with fetuses being the most vulnerable, then children and women.
Radiation affects rapidly dividing cells and these are the dividing quickly in fetuses and children. Timing is important. Just as Fetal Alcohol Syndrome occurs when alcohol is ingested at the time an embryo is developing, and cannabis may affect the developing brain of people younger than twenty five, radiation acts similarly on different age groups, inducing miscarriages, mutagenesis, or teratogenesis.
Radiation also affects specific organs, depending on the radioactive substance that is absorbed. Iodine 131 affects the thyroid, whereas strontium 90 is analogous to calcium and is taken up by bone and thus affects the bone marrow and blood.
Some people believe in a hypothesis called homesis that says that small doses of radiation may be beneficial in causing mutations that will stimulate the immune system and that some mutations may improve our species. This is held by very few non-medical people. As medical doctors, we believe that there is a linear graph such that even small amounts of radiation over time can be harmful. We should try to minimize our exposure.
Safety limits are designed by people and are dependent more on politics, to prevent panic of the masses as opposed to being based on science. Limits of radiation vary from country to country and even in local municipalities. It is set to vary, depending on the job that one does. It is allowed for workers in nuclear plants to receive up to 100 mSv. (MilliSeverts) per year, while the limit for the general population is ten mSv.
Here are the effects of acute radiation on humans: The effects vary with the size of the dose — amount of exposure to the radiation. With 50-100 mSv (milliSieverts), there are changes in blood chemistry. At 500 mSv, one develops nausea, and then fatigue, followed by vomiting at 700 mSv., followed by hair loss and then diarrhoea over the following 2-3 weeks, as the most rapidly dividing cells are affected first. At 1000 mSv. you start bleeding. At 4,000 mSv, there may be death in 2-3 months. At 10,000 mSv., there is death within 1-2 weeks with destruction of the intestinal system and bleeding. At 20,000 mSv., the neurologic system is affected resulting in loss of consciousness, and death within hours to a few days.
Here are the effects of chronic radiation on humans: miscarriages; mutagenic (changes in the genetic material, usually DNA but also RNA, leading to mutations such as Down’s syndrome), teratogenic (which disturbs the development of a fetus, resulting in congenital malformations that can be passed down to future generations); cancers such as leukaemia, thyroid, breast, brain, pancreas; hardening of the arteries, leading to strokes and heart attacks; cataracts; kidney damage; and acceleration of the overall ageing process.
We also have a gradation of severity of nuclear accidents; The International Nuclear Event Scale (INES) rates the severity of accidents on a logarithmic scale from 1 to 7 with 7 being the worst; a major accident; (Chernobyl April 1986, and Fukushima March 2011). A level 6 serious accident was the Kyshtym disaster at the Mayak Chemical Combine in the Soviet Union in September 1957 at a nuclear waste reprocessing plant. Level 5, accidents with wider consequences, include Windscale fire at Sellafield on October 1957 in the United Kingdom, which caused a fire with graphite and uranium in a military air cooled reactor; the Three Mile Island on March 1979 nuclear power plant; Chalk River, December 1952, when the reactor core was damaged; and the Goiânia accident in Brazil in 1987 when a caesium chloride radiation source was taken from an abandoned hospital.
Please see also the following paper, which expands on the above summary:
- Radiation and Nuclear Fuel (PDF; 65-page download)
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155 comments on “Overview: Radioactive Contamination”
According to new research released Wednesday, bumblebees exposed to levels of radiation seen within the Chernobyl exclusion zone saw a “significant” reduction in reproduction, prompting experts to reconsider worldwide nuclear environmental risk assessments.
Aging Hanford Tank Is Leaking Radioactive Waste Into The Ground, Feds Say
Annette Cary | Tri-City Herald | 29 April 2021
“An underground Hanford tank holding 123,000 gallons of radioactive waste appears to be leaking contaminated liquid into the ground, according to the Department of Energy.
This is the second of Hanford’s 149 single-shell tanks believed to be currently leaking waste, although in the past 67 tanks are suspected of leaking.
The most recently discovered leaker is Tank B-109, which was one of the earliest waste storage tanks built. It was constructed during World War II and received waste from Hanford site operations from 1946 to 1976.
Hanford’s 149 single-shell tanks were built to hold a mix of high-level radioactive and other hazardous chemical waste from chemically processing irradiated uranium to remove plutonium.
The Hanford site in Eastern Washington was used from WWII through the Cold War to produce about two-thirds of the plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program.”
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“The Washington state Department of Ecology and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, both Hanford regulators, were notified Thursday morning that the tank was likely leaking.
“There is no increased health or safety risk to Hanford workers or the public,” the Department of Energy said in a message to Hanford site employees Thursday.
Any contamination from the leak is expected to take more than 25 years to reach the water table, which is about 210 to 240 feet below the tank.
The groundwater flows slowly over decades toward the Columbia River from central Hanford, where Tank B-109 is located.
UP TO 3,000 GALLONS LEAKED
Tank B-109 was initially observed to be leaking up to 3.5 gallons of radioactive liquid a day, but may be leaking far less on many days, according to DOE.
At a maximum it may have leaked about 3,000 gallons of waste, said Ben Harp, the deputy manager of the DOE Office of River Protection.
It appears to be leaking waste at a higher rate than the other single-shell tank that has had a leak confirmed in recent years.
In 2013 when DOE confirmed that Tank T-111 was leaking, it said liquid levels were decreasing at a rate of 150 to 300 gallons a year, or half a gallon to a gallon a day.
From the 1990s to about 2005, DOE removed as much pumpable liquid as possible from the single-shell tanks, leaving radioactive sludge and saltcake in the tanks to address concerns about leaks.
“This is one we did empty out,” Harp said of Tank B-109.
DOE estimates that the tank, which has a capacity of 530,000 gallons, has about 2,000 gallons of liquid waste sitting above the sludge and saltcake solids that it holds.
In addition, an estimated 13,000 gallons of liquids may be held up in the tank’s solid waste, similar to the way a sponge holds water, Harp said.
Tank B-109 is not one of the previously suspected leakers.
HANFORD SOIL CONTAMINATED
But it is in an area that has soil already contaminated with radioactive material.
“Contamination in this area is not a new issue and mitigation actions have been in place for decades,” DOE said in its message to Hanford employees.
The 16 underground tanks that make up the B Tank Farm had 10 assumed leaker tanks previously. They are estimated to have leaked or spilled 157,000 gallons of liquid tank waste into the soil beneath them.
In addition two adjoining Tank Farms, the BX and BY tank farms with a total of 24 single-shell tanks, are believed to have leaked or spilled about 200,000 gallons of waste in the past.
However, the largest source of contamination comes from the historic practice of disposing of radioactive liquids in trenches and tile fields. At the B, BX and BY tank farms, an estimated 51 million gallons of contaminated liquids were poured into the ground.
With some contamination already reaching groundwater in central Hanford, DOE is pumping up contaminated water and cleaning it at the Hanford 200 West Pump and Treat plant.
One of the extraction wells to pump up contaminated groundwater is near Tank B-109.
There appeared to be a drop in the level of the liquid sitting atop solid waste, but monthly checks that started in March 2019 showed the level stable until July 2020. Then another drop was detected.
The level of waste in the tanks can fluctuate as small amounts of liquid from precipitation may enter the underground tanks, liquid evaporates, and waste moves and settles.
In July 2020 a formal leak assessment was launched. It included continued monthly checks of waste levels and lowering cameras through risers, or pipes from inside the tank to the ground surface, to observe the surface of the waste.
The final step in determining that the tank likely was leaking was a meeting of a contractor technical review board on Thursday to review data and findings.
WHAT’S NEXT FOR LEAK
DOE has some possible methods to address the leak and resulting soil contamination, Harp said.
DOE has installed three ground-level plastic or asphalt barriers over areas of two tank farms to prevent rain and snow melt from carrying contamination already in the soil deeper toward groundwater.
A barrier also could be installed over the B Tank Farm.
There is a barrier installed over the T Tank Farm, which was constructed before the leak from Tank T-111 was detected.
An exhauster also was installed in Tank T-111 to help evaporate tank liquids.
Less likely is removing as much liquid waste as possible from the tank and mixing it with a concrete-like grout for disposal, possibly outside of Washington state.
Emptying the tank is possible, but would be expensive.
To date most of the waste from at least 17 of the site’s 149 single-shell tanks have been emptied into sturdier and newer double-shell tanks until the waste can be treated for disposal.
DOE is working to start glassifying some of Hanford’s liquid tank at the $17 billion vitrification plant by the end of 2023, preparing the waste for permanent disposal.
Hanford has 27 double-shell tanks after a 28th tank was emptied and taken out of service when it sprang a leak between its shells, with the waste believed to be trapped between shells as the tank was designed to do.
However, Tank B-109 is in the 200 East Area about two miles from a double-shell tank.
Infrastructure associated with the tank dates from the 1940s. Constructing piping to move the waste from Tank B-109 to a double-shell tank could cost hundreds of millions of dollars, Harp said.
Now DOE is working on emptying single-shell tanks with updated infrastructure in place.”
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Link: https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/hanford/article251017489.html?
“Emptying the tank is possible but would be expensive.” So where would you put it? Double-shelled tanks cost hundreds of millions of dollars. But if you put it in the ground, we know where it is going to wind up. What other options are there?
Enriched Secrecy: BWXT’s Radioactive Plans
Zach Ruiter | Trent Arthur | 13 April 2021
“The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) recently granted a ten-year licence renewal to BWXT Nuclear Energy Canada on Monaghan Road in downtown Peterborough-Nogojiwanong.
The decision to grant the licence is contentious because it allows BWXT to spew toxic radioactive uranium particles into the water and disperse them in the air across the street from Prince of Wales Elementary School.
BWXT is the new owner and operator of what was General Electric-Hitachi Canada, the nuclear operation of the General Electric factory known for poisoning generations of workers and families in addition to contaminating the Little Lake and Otonabee River system with numerous toxic chemicals.
The added pollution will come from relocating their current uranium pelleting factory from Toronto to Peterborough-Nogojiwanong.”
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Pelleting is the cooking of natural uranium fuel powder, at 1650 degrees centigrade, to form ceramic pellets that go into nuclear reactor fuel rods.
The factory will process over 150 tonnes of uranium per month to provide fuel for half of all nuclear energy produced in Canada.
The decision to allow nuclear fuel pellet production in the downtown core is being challenged in court by a local group called Citizens Against Radioactive Neighbourhoods (CARN) with the help of lawyers from the Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA).
CARN alleges that the regulator unlawfully granted a ten-year licence to BWXT on the grounds that BWXT omitted details about the proposed operation’s physical design and environmental monitoring program which are required by the Nuclear Safety Control Act.
Although lawyers for CELA will ask the court to declare the licence to pellet unlawful, it is very unlikely that there is an Erin Brockovichesque moment in the cards because they are essentially arguing on a technicality.
That technicality will conceivably force BWXT to reveal potentially damaging information about their plans for the Peterborough-Nogojiwanong site that they would not like the public to know.
The information will include where they will be positioning the stacks that release uranium into the air.
In Toronto there are six stacks that release uranium into the air in all directions from the plant in a residential neighbourhood.
A detailed site and environmental monitoring plan would reveal if they are intending to release alpha-radiation emitting uranium particles in the direction of the Prince of Wales School or just on the rest of the downtown.
If required by the court, a detailed site plan may also reveal if BWXT is planning on moving the goal posts yet again to include working with highly radioactive enriched uranium to fuel a fleet of Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMNRs) currently in development.
BWXT is a leader in developing SMNR technology in Canada backed by the federal government. In a January 2020 interview CARN representative Jane Scott said, “I am sure it is their plan to work with enriched uranium because Canada is investing a lot of money in small modular reactors which require enriched uranium.”
According to Scott, “we can see a lot of hits on our http://www.nopellets.ca website from places in the US where small modular reactor businesses are located, a company called NuScale wants to make small modular reactors in Canada and has partnerships with Ontario Power Generation, Bruce Power, and BWXT in the United States.”
Scott first got involved in the fight against BWXT (formerly General Electric-Hitachi Peterborough) in 2010 when Arthur broke a story on how the company had received permission in secret in 2009 to process enriched uranium without consulting the public.
BWXT has refused to rule out the possibility of working with enriched uranium.
In January 2020 I asked BWXT spokesperson Natalie Cutler the following question, “Can you guarantee local communities that you will never bring any enriched uranium on site in Toronto or Peterborough in the future?”
Cutler claimed “We have no plans to seek a change to our licence to allow us to process enriched uranium.”
For context, BWXT also claimed it had “no plans” to conduct pelleting in Peterborough-Nogojiwanong but were seeking the “flexibility” to conduct pelleting in Peterborough-Nogojiwanong “should the need arise.”
According to Kerrie Blaise, the lawyer representing CARN, BWXT denied multiple requests to share their business plan with the public.
Citing BWXT’s proximity to the Prince of Wales Elementary School, CARN media representative Bill Templeman suggests that if BWXT wanted to conduct pelleting outside of Peterborough on “unused land,” it wouldn’t be an issue.
According to Trent Alum, Shaelyn Wabegijig, who is Algonquin Timiskaming First Nation Caribou Clan, German and Irish, the notion of “unused” land is a colonial concept rooted in the concept of “terra nullius” (no one’s land) and the Doctrine of Discovery which was used as justification for the colonial dispossession of sovereign Indigenous Nations.
Wabegijig, who works as the Program and Outreach Coordinator at the Kawartha World Issues Centre (KWIC), says the members of CARN are “people who are speaking out and trying to protect our community from danger and disease.”
According to Wabegijig, the people living near the plant deserve “communication and transparency on their own terms to determine if they want this in their neighbourhood, and a stark majority say no.”
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Link: https://www.trentarthur.ca/news/enriched-secrecy-bwxts-radioactive-plans
French Nuclear Tests Contaminated 110,000 In Pacific, Says Study
BBC News | 10 March 2021
“France concealed the true impact of its nuclear tests in the Pacific from the 1960s to the 1990s, a study has said.
Researchers used declassified French military documents, calculations and testimonies to reconstruct the impact of a number of the tests.
They estimated that around 110,000 people in French Polynesia were affected by the radioactive fallout.
The number represented “almost the entire” population at the time, the researchers found.
French Polynesia, a French territory made up of hundreds of islands and atolls including Tahiti, was the site of dozens of nuclear tests over 30 years.
Over the course of two years, researchers analysed around 2,000 documents released by the French military and recreated the impact of “the most contaminating” of France’s nuclear tests carried out between 1966 and 1974.
The study was carried out in collaboration between French news website Disclose, researchers from Princeton University and British firm Interprt.”
Read More: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56340159
How many citizens of France are aware that their government had put radioactive fallout onto 110,000 French Polynesians? We need a picture of Gauguin’s Tahitian ladies carrying nuclear contamination signs.
Remember the Rainbow Warrior!
More Poison from the Plant
Zach Ruiter | Arthur (Trent University) | 14 January 2021
“On the solstice, December 21, 2020, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) gifted BWXT Nuclear Energy Canada with an extended licence to pollute in downtown Peterborough-Nogojiwanong.
That licence allows BWXT to significantly intensify their radioactive pollution across the street from the Prince of Wales Elementary School on Monaghan Road.
Pollution will intensify by adding uranium fuel processing to their current operations, known as pelleting.”
Read More Here: https://www.trentarthur.ca/news/more-poison-from-the-plant
Big Money, Nuclear Subsidies, and Systemic Corruption
Cassandra Jeffery and M. V. Ramana | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists | 12 February 2021
“For years, the firm lobbied to get a subsidy to continue operating its unprofitable nuclear plants and maintain its revenue flow. When lobbying efforts failed to produce subsidies, it resorted to bribery to gain legislative support for House Bill 6, 2019 legislation that forces state consumers to pay into something called “the Ohio Clean Air Fund.” The green language is a smoke screen for the real purpose: to siphon nearly $150 million annually to FirstEnergy to keep its Perry and Davis-Besse nuclear power plants and two coal-fired power plants operating, while simultaneously gutting Ohio’s renewable energy standards. Also gone were the state’s energy efficiency programs, which had saved consumers and corporations millions of dollars. When citizens tried to organize a referendum to repeal the bill, FirstEnergy indulged in various dirty tactics to thwart this democratic opposition.
[…]
These companies and various associated organizations have engaged in extensive lobbying and large-scale propaganda campaigns to get governments pass legislation that makes consumers pay more for the electricity they use. In that sense, what has resulted would be better described as corporate welfare than as subsidies. The subsidies have improved these companies’ financial situation, which in turn contributes to their clout in state and national policy making and their ability to fund advocacy efforts—and even to pay politicians tidy sums of money. The larger significance of the political power these large utilities have amassed is their ability to block transition to a fully renewable and more environmentally sustainable energy system.”
Read More: https://thebulletin.org/2021/02/big-money-nuclear-subsidies-and-systemic-corruption
This way to treat Hanford radioactive waste could save $210 billion. But is it safe enough?
Annette Cary | Tri-City Herald | 7 January 2021 | https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/hanford/article248276995.html
“Grouting rather than glassifying a large amount of radioactive waste at the Hanford nuclear reservation could save taxpayers $73 billion to $210 billion, according to a new Department of Energy report.
Turning millions of gallons of waste into a concrete-like grout form also could cut 10 years off the time needed to treat radioactive waste now stored in underground tanks and permanently dispose of it, the DOE report estimated.”
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DOE recently submitted a report to Congress on potential opportunities for different ways to treat waste now held at Hanford and other DOE nuclear sites.
The report was required three years ago by the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act to look at the feasibility, costs and cost savings of reclassifying high level radioactive waste to allow it to be treated and disposed of in ways not allowed for high level waste.
“Let’s trust the science and move forward,” said Washington state Sen. Sharon Brown, R-Richland, who has advocated for classifying some tank waste as low level waste to allow more efficient treatment.
The cost savings identified in the report “are a big step in the right direction, and would assist both DOE and its regulators in focusing on the mission of protecting those mist impacted — local citizens and tribal members,” said Richland Councilman Bob Thompson, chairman of Hanford Communities, a coalition of Hanford area local governments.
“We need the Hanford Site cleaned up, and I’m concerned that it will be very difficult to achieve given current cost estimates,” he said. “We should be exploring alternatives that can reduce costs and expedite the cleanup while maintaining safety and effectiveness.”
The latest cost estimate for the remaining environmental cleanup at the Hanford site, which was released two years ago, said taxpayers will need to spend $323 billion to $677 billion.
The 580-square-mile Hanford nuclear reservation in Eastern Washington was used from World War II through the Cold War to produce two-thirds of the plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program.
But Hanford Challenge, a Seattle-based watchdog group, found the report “shocking,” said its executive director, Tom Carpenter.
The report discusses reclassifying up to 80% of the 56 million gallons of Hanford tank waste to allow it to be stabilized in a concrete-like grout form, rather than vitrifying, or glassifying it.
That could open the door to grouting waste in tanks rather than emptying the tanks, Carpenter said.
RECLASSIFYING WASTE
Any waste produced when fuel irradiated at Hanford reactors was chemically processed to remove plutonium is classified as high level radioactive waste under U.S. law.
But internationally, waste classification is based not on how waste is produced as it is for high level waste in the United States, but on its radiological risk.
“It makes sense to me that we would manage and treat Hanford’s waste based on its physical characteristics, rather than how it was produced,” said David Reeploeg, the Tri-City Development Council vice president for federal programs.
Already much of the tank waste at Hanford, while by definition is high level, is referred to as low activity radioactive waste and managed as it if is low level rather than high level waste by agreement between the state of Washington and the federal government.
In 2019, DOE adopted a new policy that allows it to reclassify radioactive waste if it determines it does not exceed certain radionuclide concentrations for low level waste or does not need to be disposed of in a deep geological repository, such as the one proposed at Yucca Mountain, Nev.
However, Congress has banned the new policy from being used in Washington state under the two most recent National Defense Authorization Acts.
High level waste can still be reclassified but under a more involved process that relies on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The new DOE report to Congress stresses that reclassifying tank waste for grouting is not a proposal, only a look at potential opportunities.
Before any action is taken DOE would need to gather more data, do more analyses and discuss the proposed change with those interested in Hanford, the report said.
GROUTING TANK WASTEThe report looks at the possibility of reclassifying much of the waste stored in underground tanks in part of central Hanford, the 200 West Area, and then grouting it for disposal rather than turning it into stable glass logs at the $17 billion vitrification plant under construction.
Hanford has 56 million gallons of radioactive waste stored in underground tanks, split between the 200 East Area and the 200 West Area, which are about seven miles apart.
The underground tanks include 149 single shell tanks which are prone to leaking. They are being emptied into 27 newer double-shell tanks for more secure storage until the waste can be treated for permanent disposal.
Most of the double-shell tanks — all but three — are in the 200 East Area.
In addition to the three double-shell tanks, the 200 West Area also has 83 of the Hanford site’s single-shell tanks, some of them with a capacity of 1 million gallons.
Grouting 80% of the 200 West Area tank waste would allow the waste to be treated in a less-complex, lower temperature and lower risk method, the DOE report said.
The vitrification plant heats waste and glass forming materials to 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit to produce a stable glass form.
Some of the cost savings of grouting could come from not having to expand the vitrification plant, according to the DOE report.
The plant was never planned to be large enough to treat all of the low-activity tank waste at Hanford.
Grouting large amounts of the 200 West Area tank waste also could eliminate the need to replace or repair seven miles of cross-site transfer line, according to the report.
The pipe would move the waste from the 200 West Area to the 200 East Area for storage in double-shell tanks and treatment at the vitrification plant, which is in the 200 East Area.
Grouting the waste also could allow the waste to be sent off of Hanford for disposal, leaving less waste permanently disposed in the Eastern Washington nuclear reservation, the DOE report said.
Now the low-activity waste glassified at the vitrification plant is planned to be disposed of in a lined landfill in central Hanford.
But the state of Washington objects to waste being buried there unless it is vitrified or can be shown to be as protective of the environment as glass.
HANFORD GROUTING TESTDOE has grouted three gallons of radioactive waste in a test, using an engineered grout form that is protective of the environment, it said.
The waste was sent from Hanford to nearby Perma-Fix Environmental Solutions in Richland to be encapsulated in a specialized grout. It then was sent to a Waste Control Specialists disposal cell in Texas that was built for low-level radioactive waste from federal government sites.
Congress has already appropriated money to continue the demonstration of the grouting project on more waste, said Gary Petersen, president of Northwest Energy Associates, a nonprofit, Hanford advocacy group formed by Tri-Cities area business leaders.
He questions why the second phase of the test, which would involve grouting 2,000 gallons, has not started.
The 200 West tanks are a great place to demonstrate the grouting project because DOE currently does not seem to have a plan for treating the waste in tanks that is far from the vitrification plant, he said.
HANFORD CHALLENGE CONCERNS
However, Hanford Challenge is skeptical that it is practical to grout millions of gallons of waste and ship it off site, saying the more likely outcome of reclassifying so much tank waste would be to grout the waste within the tanks and leave it in the ground at Hanford.
The grout could fail within a matter of decades, he said, which would put more groundwater at Hanford at risk of contamination.
Although reclassifying tank waste is not currently allowed in Washington state, it is being used successfully already at DOE’s Savannah River, S.C., nuclear site, Brown pointed out.
The first use of DOE’s new reclassification policy resulted in eight gallons of recycled wastewater from vitrification at Savannah River being grouted and sent to the Waste Control Specialists repository in Texas.
Just as reclassification of waste was done at Savannah River, it “can be successfully utilized in a safe manner as well at Hanford,” Brown said.
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1960
Huh? This doesn’t explain what the hell “grouting” is. Encapsulating the waste in a “specialized grout”? Tell us more about this “grout.”
Until closing Feb 6, 2021 petition to call on the Canadian Government to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is open.
Sign here:https://petitions.ourcommons.ca/en/Petition/Sign/e-3028
Nuclear Imperialism in China’s Xinjiang
Tara Rao | Observer Research Foundation | 19 October 2020
A third of the PRCs uranium for nuclear energy comes from extortion in the Yili basin of Xinjiang. This is also home to a great population of Uighurs.
Today, China has one of the world’s largest nuclear energy development programmes. During the Cold War era, there did not exist a political or economic motivator for commercialising nuclear energy as coal-fired power stations and hydroelectric energy dominated the system. However, after 2005, China has been able to reinvent this narrative. Notably, what this resurrected was a reassertion of spaces of injustice for their minorities. Their lands were first grounds for nuclear weapons’ testing and now used for energy rather than warfare purposes, thus continuing a historical subjugation to nuclear imperialism. This nuclear imperialism situates itself within an already prevalent cyclic violence against China’s far western frontier region of Xinjiang’s ethnic minorities, the predominantly Muslim Uighurs, ever since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949.
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Given the inherent differentiation between the Uighurs and the Chinese dominant ethnicity, the Hans, the former’s identity was always up for scrutiny. The government came down particularly hard on the Uighurs after the events of 9/11 initiated the Global War on Terror (GWOT), as well as the Ürümqi riots on 5 July 2009 which saw clashes between protesting Uighurs, Han people, and China’s People’s Armed Police, leaving nearly 200 people dead in Xinjiang. The Chinese government has attributed security concerns with the certain ‘terrorist’ acts committed by a handful of them. Taking what some might perceive as an opportunist stand, China was able to claim being victim to global terrorism, to justify crackdown on the minority group. What this terrorist narrative in turn ushered in was a transnational territory of uncontrolled spaces where ‘dangerous populations’ need not be afforded legal protections and therefore be made to quarantine; containing their actions that often correspond to security threats. The antagonism was not restricted to the few Uighurs rioters. Instead the entire Uighur community as a single biological group was treated as the Homo Sacer. [1] These instances prove showcasing evidence of necropolitical [2] rule over Uighurs by the PRC, in the face of Hui or Han for instance.
Taking what some might perceive as an opportunist stand, China was able to claim being victim to global terrorism, to justify crackdown on the minority group.
China’s approach towards the Uighurs has witnessed many stages of crackdown, from a programme trying to integrate them into a Han-dominated society while cracking down on dissent, movement, practices of culture and religion, now to a virtual quarantine of the entire ethnic group by using eugenics to dilute their existence — de-Uighurise Xinjiang. The systematic discrimination of the Uighur feeds into a larger understanding of necro-politics of Uighur lives having become too consequential juxtaposed with a system which is ready to dispense with this minority population. The emphasis here is on China’s first nuclear weapons test in Lop Nor, and the legacy it has translated onto the present day context through states sponsored uranium mining in the Yili Basin, underscoring a new kind of imperialism.
Nuclear weapon testing began in the mid-1960s. Soon a kind of nuclear imperialism started to take root in the existing Han colonisation of Uighur spaces. The latter revolved around a combination of contestation over the sovereignty of the Uighur homeland and the resource-rich soils they inhabited. The aftermath of the Sino-Soviet split meant a collapse in PRCs nuclear relationship with China which acted as a driver for hastening and furthering their ambitious nuclear programmes. The PRC became the fifth nation to develop nuclear weapons during the Cold War. They formally established the 10,000 km sq. Lop Nor Nuclear Test base in 1956. It still stands as the largest site of its kind in the world.
Nuclear weapon testing began in the mid-1960s. Soon a kind of nuclear imperialism started to take root in the existing Han colonisation of Uighur spaces.
Mao Zeadong’s death in 1976 marked the end of the cultural revolution and brought in the economic liberalisation markets. Notably, the Nor test facility sustained through this transition. And the repercussions of this on the region’s Uighur population were detrimental. Environmental degradation, health-related problems, restrictions on their traditional ways are surface examples of the many hardships were made to endure. Professor Jun Takada conducted a study explaining how peak levels of radioactivity from large yield tests might have had prolonged consequences in the biological makeup of the generations to come observing congenital defects and cancer incidents in some. The cancer incidents in the region were approximately 35% higher than the rest of the state. Uighur traditional medicine could not cope with these cases. In short, a biopolitical regime protected the state from liability, meanwhile for the Uighurs, contestation around state assurance and health risks posed a blurring in the causation between sickness and exposition. The Uighurs who were affected by the Lop Nor test therefore have been given no compensation or recognition from the state. Many Hans on the other hand were given assurance from the state especially in terms of healthcare on various occasions. This only furthered the resentment and tension between the Hans and the Uighurs of Xinjiang in the years to come.
Following this, peaceful protests sprung up. In November 1985, protests led by students in Beijing against nuclear weapon tests were met with brute state coercion. In 1993, Uighurs gathered at Log Nor and demanded the ban of nuclear testing but were interrupted by PLA forces, some protestors were shot in the process. The Tigers of Lop Nor were an organisation that even managed to send tanks inside nuclear spaces and blew up planes in protest. Moreover, enveloped in this environment, the Uighur identity that already clashed with Han nationalism was simply made starker; the anti-nuclear movement began to echo separatist tendencies.
A biopolitical regime protected the state from liability, meanwhile for the Uighurs, contestation around state assurance and health risks posed a blurring in the causation between sickness and exposition. Today, a third of the PRCs uranium for nuclear energy comes from extortion in the Yili basin of Xinjiang. This is also home to a great population of Uighurs. The PRC has placed a moratorium on the manufacturing of fissile material for deterrence purposes, transforming Xinjiang into the primary hub for the nuclear energy industry. The NINT continues to partake in nuclear research, to the north of the Lop Nor test site. There is no state system in place to ensure the safety of those dwelling the Yili. What this reflects is a revival of a past narrative of nuclear imperialism as uranium energy extraction seems to have overtaken nuclear testing. There appears to be no incentive from the ends of the government; a lacking in enforceable nuclear legislations and regional systems of monitoring and regulating nuclear activity.
In 2003, there was a law in place by China for the prevention and control of radioactive pollution coming from the development of Uranium mines. This meant that state council environmental units were delegated the responsibility to inspect this practice. However the “units” were held accountable over legitimate entities which guaranteed that any accident would have the blame falling upon a set of individuals rather than a full-fledged organisation. This left little motivation for organisations such as CNN to foresee protection of the workers. In fact, it is only when dealing with a large batch where occasional checks are made and endorsed by international agreements.
https://www.orfonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Uighur_Xinjiang.jpg
There appears to be no incentive from the ends of the government; a lacking in enforceable nuclear legislations and regional systems of monitoring and regulating nuclear activity. Image © Kevin Frayer/Getty
The PRC moved towards a stronger development of uranium after 2008. China now possesses over 44 nuclear reactors in operation and 18 others under construction and is striving towards ensuring that 1/5th of their energy comes from their power plants by 2030. Activism from the minorities in the region is often counted by officials as acts of Islamism or cultural protests rather than a legacy of activities against the nuclear industry which is another layer of discrimination that has been recognised by the Uighurs. More anti-nuclear activism seems to be entering the eastern provinces of Shandong, Jiangsu, and Guangdong as a result of general community concerns against an unprotected nuclear policy. Online petitions and active media are slowly entering the scene to influence and mobilise public opinion. However, it is only perhaps a matter of time before the PRC silences them too.
Activism from the minorities in the region is often counted by officials as acts of Islamism or cultural protests rather than a legacy of activities against the nuclear industry.
Censorship is often used to subdue this kind of opposition online. What is worse is that the Uighurs of Xinjiang lack the agency to voice their grievances while practitioners in the east who are often familiar with the political systems and often well-educated are able to make negotiations with the state in terms of the relocation of nuclear power plants. Moreover, this relocation continues to happen at the expense of those lives perceived as less influential and whom the state already actively curtailing. Protected Han communities show little concern over the successor communities who not only receive the plant in their stead but also remain oblivious to the entangled intranational network whereby novel nuclear energy in the East is fueled by uranium extraction and milling in the West of the PRC.
Xinjiang, therefore, occupies the status of the core nuclear hub of the PRC who still perpetuates measures to curb challenges surrounding their Uighur minority in a bid to wipe them off completely both culturally and politically, and showcase a biopolitics of hatred and cultural genocide. Without enough mounting pressure and deft interception from the International realm, Xinjiang remains a necropolitical space where the “.. the lines between resistance and suicide, sacrifice and redemption, martyrdom and freedom are blurred.”
[1] Categories of minority may be described as Homo Sacre (“sacred” or “accursed” man), within a modern environment of biologically excluding those deemed unproductive or dangerous in modern conflicts.
[2] Necropolitics describes the utilisation of socio-political power to determine how some people may live and how some must die.
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Link: https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/nuclear-imperialism-china-xinjiang/
Groups say federal funding of new nuclear reactors is a “dirty, dangerous distraction” from tackling climate change
Canadian Environmental Law Association | 20 October 2020
Ottawa, October 20, 2020 — Public interest groups across Canada are criticizing the federal government for funding small nuclear reactor development and are challenging the government to release the research and data that support its strategy.
Ministers Seamus O’Regan and Navdeep Bains last week announced a $20 million grant to Terrestrial Energy in Ontario to continue developing a molten salt reactor. More funding announcements for new nuclear reactors are expected in the coming weeks.
The federal funding for new nuclear energy is opposed by groups from BC to New Brunswick, including the West Coast Environmental Law Association, Friends of the Earth Canada, Greenpeace Canada, Canadian Environmental Law Association, Environmental Defence, Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick, Coalition for a Clean Green Saskatchewan, Concerned Citizens of Manitoba, Northwatch, Sierra Club Canada Foundation, Ralliement contre la pollution radioactive, Équiterre and the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility.
The groups say “next generation” nuclear reactors are a dirty, dangerous distraction from tackling the climate crisis. Nuclear energy is not green, not clean, too costly and too slow to build.
The groups charge that the federal government is trying to save the nuclear industry rather than saving the environment and protecting health.
The groups say that:
[read more]
Small Modular Reactor (SMR) development is too slow to address the climate crisis:
The 2020 World Nuclear Industry Status Report says that developing new nuclear energy is too slow to address the climate crisis – as well as more expensive – compared to renewable energy and energy efficiency. No SMRs have yet been built and the models being proposed will take a decade or more to develop.
SMRs are more expensive than renewable energy:
A Canadian study found that energy from small nuclear reactors would be up to ten times the cost of renewable energy. In the past decade, the cost of building solar, wind power and battery storage has gone down dramatically, while the cost of building new nuclear reactors has gone up. Small reactors will be even more expensive per unit of power than the current large ones.
Nuclear power creates fewer jobs than renewable energy:
Renewable energy is one of the fastest-growing job sectors in North America. An American study found that solar energy leads to six times as many jobs as nuclear power for each gigawatt-hour of electricity generated.
There are better sources of energy:
Minister O’Regan has said repeatedly, without providing evidence, that there is no path to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions without nuclear energy. In fact, on the contrary a new study of 123 countries over 25 years found that countries that invested in renewable energy lowered their carbon emissions much more than those reliant on nuclear energy.
SMRs are dirty and dangerous:
The new “small” reactors, proposed to be built across Canada, will produce radioactive waste of many kinds. Some of the proposed models would extract plutonium from irradiated fuel, worsening concerns about weapons proliferation and creating new forms of radioactive waste that are especially dangerous to manage. The federal government currently has no detailed policy or strategy for what to do with radioactive waste, and no design or location for a deep underground repository where industry proposes to store high-level radioactive waste for hundreds of thousands of years.
The federal government has never consulted the public about small modular reactors, which would create environmental risks and financial liabilities for Canadians.
Public Interest Groups Opposing SMR Funding:
Action Climat Outaouais (Que.)
Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment
Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility
Canadian Environmental Law Association
Citizens’ Network on Waste Management (Ont.)
Coalition Against Nuclear Dumps on the Ottawa River (Ont.)
Coalition for a Clean Green Saskatchewan
Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick
Committee for Future Generations (Sask.)
Concerned Citizens of Manitoba
Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County and Area (Ont.)
Council of Canadians (Saint John)
Environmental Defence
Équiterre
Extinction Rebellion (New Brunswick)
Friends of the Earth Canada
Greenpeace Canada
The Inter-Church Uranium Committee Educational Cooperative (Sask.)
Leap4wards (Saint John)
MiningWatch Canada
Northwatch
Nova Scotia Voice of Women for Peace
Old Fort William Cottagers’ Association (Que.)
Ontario Clean Air Alliance
Ralliement contre la pollution radioactive (Que.)
RAVEN at the (University of New Brunswick)
Science for Peace
Sierra Club Canada Foundation
Sustainable Energy Group, New Brunswick
VOICES for Sustainable Environments and Communities (N.B.)
West Coast Environmental Law Association (B.C.)
YYC For A Green New Deal
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Link: https://cela.ca/dirty-dangerous-new-reactors
Current Chernobyl-level radiation harmful to bees: study
Bumblebees exposed to levels of radiation found within the Chernobyl exclusion zone suffered a “significant” drop in reproduction, in new research published Wednesday that scientists say should prompt a rethink of international calculations of nuclear environmental risk.
The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, set out to discover how ionizing radiation affects insects, which are often thought to be more resilient than other species.
Researchers in Scotland and Germany exposed bee colonies in a laboratory setting to a range of radiation levels found in areas of the exclusion zone around the ruined Chernobyl site, where a reactor exploded in 1986 in the world’s worst nuclear disaster.
They found that colony reproduction reduced by 30% to 45% at doses previously considered too low to impact insects.
[read more]
“We found that at radiation levels detectable in Chernobyl, the number of new queen bees produced from the colony was significantly reduced and colony growth was delayed — meaning colonies reached their peak weight at a week later,” said the paper’s lead author Katherine Raines.
The lecturer in environmental pollution at the University of Stirling told AFP by email that researchers “anticipate that this may have an effect on pollination/ecosystem services in contaminated areas”.
The authors said they chose bumblebees both because of a lack of lab-based research into bees and because of their crucial role in pollination.
Ionising radiation can occur either from nuclear sites or medical procedures, although the levels tested were higher than those that would likely be found in the environment from normal releases, Raines said.
But she added that the researchers were “very surprised that we could detect effects as low as we did”.
“Our research suggests insects living in the most contaminated areas at Chernobyl may suffer adverse effects, with subsequent consequences for ecosystem services such as pollination,” she added.
The authors said if their findings could be generalised “they suggest insects suffer significant negative consequences at dose rates previously thought safe” and called revisions to the international framework for radiological protection of the environment.
People are not allowed to live near the Chernobyl power station and the abandoned settlements within the exclusion zone are surrounded by forests hosting birds, wolves, elks and lynxes. A giant protective dome was put in place over the destroyed fourth reactor in 2016.
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https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/current-chernobyl-level-radiation-harmful-to-bees-study/article32908484.ece
Japan Left With Only One Nuclear Reactor Working Due To Shutdown
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13900336
Shutdown due to Maintenance; Implementation of Safety Upgrades; and Anti-Terrorism System Installation
Japan will have to limp by on just one nuclear reactor for the next six weeks after Kansai Electric Power Co. shut down the No. 4 reactor at its Oi nuclear plant in Fukui Prefecture, western Japan, for regular maintenance on Nov. 3.
That task will fall to the No. 4 reactor of Kyushu Electric Power Co.’s Genkai nuclear power plant in Genkai, Saga Prefecture.
All nuclear power plants shut down in Japan in the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster that crippled the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture.
Since then, the Kansai, Shikoku and Kyushu electric power utilities restarted operations of nine reactors at five nuclear power plants.
This is the first time since May 2017 that all nuclear reactors operated by Kansai Electric remain suspended.
Electric power companies are required to construct an anti-terrorism facility at their nuclear power plants under stringent new safety regulations imposed after the triple meltdown at the Fukushima plant.
But Kansai Electric failed to meet the deadline at the Takahama nuclear power plant in Takahama, Fukui Prefecture, forcing it to take its No. 3 and No. 4 reactors offline.
In addition, pipes need to be replaced at its Oi nuclear power plant’s No. 3 reactor.
Kansai Electric submitted repair plans to the government and expects to finish the work in January so it can restart the reactor in February at the earliest.
In January this year, the Hiroshima High Court granted a provisional disposition order to stop Shikoku Electric’s Ikata nuclear power plant’s No. 3 reactor in Ikata, Ehime Prefecture, which means it is unlikely to come back online until next March at the earliest.
Kyushu Electric’s Sendai nuclear power plant’s No. 1 and No. 2 reactors in Satsuma-Sendai, Kagoshima Prefecture, were also suspended after construction of an anti-terrorism facility fell behind schedule.
The Genkai nuclear power plant’s No. 3 reactor is undergoing regular inspections, so only the No. 4 reactor is still operating.
This situation is expected to continue until Dec. 22 when Kansai Electric plans to restart the No. 3
U.S. Goes Nuclear to Compete With Russia, China in Europe’s East
“The former Cold War frontier of eastern Europe is becoming a battleground in the $500 billion business of building nuclear power plants.
Four months after lifting a prohibition on financing nuclear-energy deals overseas, the U.S. is finding an opening for companies such as General Electric Co., Westinghouse Electric Co. and Bechtel Group Inc.
In the span of a few weeks, the U.S. signed a memorandum with Romania for the financing of a new reactor and other accords with Poland as well as Bulgaria, which plans to revive an older reactor project.
The plan to win business for U.S. companies in this geopolitically key market started under Donald Trump is poised to survive the transition to a new U.S. administration under President-elect Joe Biden. That may nudge eastern European partners to move forward with stalled nuclear projects.
Greater access to financing may be the chief advantage on the American side as it pushes back against Russian and Chinese interests in the region”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-09/u-s-goes-nuclear-to-compete-with-russia-china-in-europe-s-east
Did you know that climate change is a big risk for nuclear reactors?
Nuclear News notes the following:
“As global warming climbs and humanity’s water consumption increases, nuclear and fossil-fueled power plants that rely on freshwater for cooling may not be able to perform at their peak capacity or could be forced to shut down temporarily even as demand for their supplies for indoor cooling and other uses increase, according to researchers and industry experts.
Climate change-exacerbated water shortage issues pose a near-term and longer-term performance risk to power plants, such as hydropower and nuclear, around the world. And in the Lower 48, more than half of the fossil-fueled and nuclear fleet is located in areas forecast to face climate-related water stress by the end of this decade under a business-as-usual scenario, according to an analysis by S&P Global Market Intelligence.
But electric utilities’ overall exposure to power plant water stress risks could diminish as they pursue decarbonization strategies and replace water-dependent plants with wind and solar generation that require little to no water. Some companies are also implementing water management and related investment strategies to reduce their exposure.”
[…]
“A plant’s location is not the only factor that will determine its vulnerability to water stress. A plant’s water source, cooling technology and the temperature of the water when it is withdrawn are also key factors, according to scientific reports. The Market Intelligence analysis using the WRI tool does not account for those three factors.
In addition, rising ambient air and water temperatures can also create operational and legal issues for plants. Because plants primarily use water to cool their systems, “if that water is hot or warmer to start with, that’s not so good. That makes the power plant less efficient” and it also means the plant risks violating federal restrictions on how hot water can be when it is discharged, said Auroop Ganguly, director of the Northeastern University College of Engineering Sustainability and Data Sciences Laboratory.”
https://nuclear-news.net/2020/10/24/climate-change-a-big-threat-to-nuclear-reactors-as-water-supplies-at-risk
Did you know that multiple other nuclear power plants around the world are at risk from seismic threats?
This timely article from Dr. Ed Lyman – the Director of Nuclear Power Safety, Climate, & Energy at the Union of Concerned Scientists discusses this in more detail within the context of the H. B. Robinson Nuclear Power Plant operated by Duke Energy Progress in Hartsville, South Carolina, United States of America.
Several other plants in the United States of America are at risk from seismic threats, including the Callaway Nuclear Power Plant in Fulton, Missouri; the D. C. Cook Nuclear Power Plant in Bridgman, Michigan; and Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant in Avila Beach, California.
https://blog.ucsusa.org/edwin-lyman/earthquakes-and-h-b-robinson-plant
What are your thoughts on Japan’s recent proposal to release radioactive contaminated water from the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi Disaster into the Pacific Ocean? Holding tanks on site for radioactively contaminated cooling water and radioactively contaminated groundwater will be full by 2022.
https://www.dw.com/…/tepco-fukushima-contaminate…/a-55334567
Who should lead Canada’s public consultation on federal radioactive waste policy?
“. . . it has become abundantly clear that public confidence in the field of radioactive waste management cannot be secured unless there is a scrupulous avoidance of conflict of interest.”
Opinion: Gordon Edwards and Susan O’Donnell | The Hill Times, September 21, 2020
Two weeks ago, Blaine Higgs revealed that if re-elected as the Premier of New Brunswick he would announce a multimillion-dollar grant secured from the federal government to back new nuclear reactor development in the province.
Two companies, Moltex Energy and ARC Canada, from the US and the UK, now based in Saint John, have asked for a combined $70 million from the Strategic Innovation Fund to prepare to test their prototype reactors at the site of the Point Lepreau nuclear power plant. The New Brunswick government and provincial utility NB Power have already given $5 million each to the companies.
If built, these new reactors will generate radioactive wastes of all existing categories – low-level, high-level, and intermediate-level – along with new types of radioactive waste materials for which Canada has no experience and no specific provisions for dealing with in the very long term.
[read more]
Last November, a multinational team of experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) recommended that Canada beef up its antiquated and very brief (143-word) radioactive waste policy framework, and to formulate a national strategy for the long-term management of radioactive wastes. In February, Canada accepted the IAEA recommendation and agreed to act.
But before Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) has even begun to engage on the radioactive waste file, it is eagerly promoting the development of a fleet of small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) in Canada. Indeed, NRCan has prepared an “SMR Action Plan” that anticipates “civil society consultation and engagement” from July to September 2020, and promises to “finalize and print” its Action Plan for new reactors in October. All of this with no explicit mention of the existing “policy vacuum” on radioactive wastes.
It makes sense that Natural Resources Canada identifies strongly with the needs of resource industries — oil and gas, pipelines, oil sands, uranium, and other resource extraction enterprises. But the long-term management of radioactive waste is more of a societal problem than an industry problem. Nuclear wastes will long outlive the nuclear industry that created it and the nuclear regulator that licensed its production.
Because radioactivity cannot be shut off or rendered harmless, these wastes will pose a potential danger to the health and safety of future generations and the environment with no discernible finite time horizon. Even low and intermediate level wastes remain hazardous for hundreds of thousands of years, and high-level wastes are known to be radiotoxic for millions of years.
There is a real conflict of interest in entrusting Canada’s policy on radioactive waste to the industry that created the waste, or the department that champions that industry, both of whom are inclined to regard the matter as a “public relations” problem for the industry rather than a safety concern for future generations.
In May, 100 public interest groups across Canada, including nine in New Brunswick, wrote to Minister O’Regan asking him to initiate a broad public process of consultation to involve Canadians directly in the formulation of a socially acceptable radioactive waste policy and associated strategy. The letter also asked the minister to suspend three controversial radioactive waste “disposal” projects – all of them appear to be in violation of existing IAEA guidelines – until Canada has an acceptable policy in place.
In the month leading up to New Brunswick’s snap election last week, NGOs wrote to Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan offering to host public consultative sessions in New Brunswick on Canada’s yet-to-be-determined radioactive waste policy. The groups were responding to the Minister’s promise in July to “consult and engage with all Canadians” to develop a socially acceptable policy and to formulate a national strategy for the long-term management of all categories of radioactive waste.
The situation is even more urgent when promoters plan to “recycle” high-level radioactive waste – used CANDU fuel. The two new reactors proposed for New Brunswick intend to access the plutonium contained in the solid used fuel bundles already stored at NB Power’s Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station, the only operating CANDU reactor in Canada located outside of Ontario.
Extracting plutonium from used nuclear fuel is dangerous and highly controversial, raising international concerns about nuclear weapons proliferation, since plutonium is the primary nuclear explosive in the world’s nuclear arsenals.
After India exploded its first atomic bomb in 1974 using plutonium extracted from a Canadian reactor, “recycling” used fuel in this way was banned in the US even for civilian purposes because of proliferation concerns. South Korea was prevented from acquiring plutonium extraction technology by its American ally, and to this day, has been prevented from using the extraction technology now planned for New Brunswick. This raises global concerns affecting not only Canada’s reputation but the grim prospect of an increasingly nuclear-armed world.
Extracting plutonium also requires converting solid fuel bundles into a highly corrosive liquid form, complicating the handling and long-term management of the resulting waste. Less than one percent of the used fuel is recuperated for useful purposes.
Evidently Canada’s revised radioactive waste policy and associated strategy will have to address these thorny questions of safety and security, and NRCan alone is not well-equipped to negotiate such a tricky political obstacle course.
To avoid a conflict of interest between the waste producers, and those in charge of safeguarding the public and the environment from the toxic byproducts, several countries have established independent agencies for the long-term management of radioactive waste and the decommissioning of nuclear facilities – agencies that have no direct ties to the nuclear industry or to the nuclear regulator. Some examples include: ANDRA in France, NDA in the UK, and BGE in Germany.
In 1998, following a 10-year environmental assessment process with public hearings in five provinces, the Seaborn Panel unanimously recommended that Canada create such an independent radioactive waste agency, but the government of the day chose otherwise.
In the intervening years, it has become abundantly clear that public confidence in the field of radioactive waste management cannot be secured unless there is a scrupulous avoidance of conflict of interest. If safety and environmental protection are to be paramount, those supervising the long-term management of the wastes must be seen to be immune from undue influence from the industry and its promoters and enablers: AECL, CNL, CNSC, and NRCan.
Minister O’Regan, by virtue of the position he occupies, appears to be in a conflict-of-interest. Other federal ministers from Environment, Health, Global Affairs, the Treasury Board, and even the Prime Minister’s Office, in addition to Natural Resources, must be involved. We suggest that a multi-departmental oversight committee of cabinet would be appropriate to ensure Canada meets its treaty obligations to have a policy and a strategy on the long-term management of radioactive wastes in Canada.
For pragmatic reasons, the Government of Canada is normally reluctant to involve more than one department in the execution of any particular program. However, we face an unprecedented situation: a hitherto unsolved problem of the human race, with multidimensional aspects.
The policy objectives are manifold, ranging from protecting the environment and safeguarding public health, to reinforcing non-proliferation objectives and bolstering Canada’s reputation as a trend setter in state-of-the-art waste management, while ensuring that the best value is obtained in exchange for the expenditure of billions of dollars of public money.
According to recent thinking from UNESCO, it will also be necessary to carefully archive all relevant information in imaginative ways, so that future generations can understand the nature of the radioactive legacy we are leaving them, and how they might best deal with it if things go wrong. Our descendants must be given the tools needed to cope with any eventuality.
Dr. Gordon Edwards, a scientist and nuclear consultant, is the president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility and is based in Montreal. Dr. Susan O’Donnell, a former senior research officer at the National Research Council of Canada, is the lead researcher on the University of New Brunswick project Rural Action and Voices for the Environment (RAVEN) and is based in Fredericton.
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Graphic Shows Problems Managing Radioactive Waste
Dr. Richard Denton has shared this graphic-based report on radioactive waste management with Project Save the World. This report was initially available in French in 2014, but has just been translated to English.
Due to file size limitations, I am unable to embed the material directly into this comment.
https://octet.ca/sgdn/100_millenaires_et_des_poussieres_2020_EN.pdf
This is really good. I learned from it and I would love to use it in teaching high school kids too. But they are not taught about nuclear problems. At least, not where I live.
https://tosavetheworld.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/reprocessing-graphic.png
China is Reprocessing Plutonium
From the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
“Since 1983, China has had the objective of developing breeder reactors to run on recycled plutonium. Since 2004, it has been progressing through three stages of its plutonium recycling strategy: from pilot to demonstration to commercial facilities. At the first stage, in 2010, China began testing a pilot civilian reprocessing plant and running a small experimental fast reactor.
“Although those pilot facilities did not perform well, since 2015 China has moved forward to the second stage, which includes a demonstration reprocessing plant, a mixed-oxide fuel facility, and two demonstration liquid-sodium-cooled fast-neutron reactors. Recent satellite images and other information show construction of those demonstration facilities is actively underway. Meanwhile, the China National Nuclear Corporation is pushing toward the third stage by negotiating with France’s nuclear fuel cycle company Orano (formerly Areva) over the purchase of a large commercial reprocessing plant, and has proposed construction of large commercial fast-neutron reactors by 2028.”
Back in the 1990s, there were proposals to ship American and Russian plutonium to Canada for use at experimental CANDU reactors. What ever happened to this program? It is certainly an alarming notion, as the nuclear waste products from this program would become Canada’s responsibility in the long-term.
The most important mission we have is to create an international law banning reprocessing. That would (albeit modestly) limit the risk of proliferating weapons.
Absolutely right, Joanne. See Frank von Hippel’s new book, “Plutonium — How Nuclear Power’s Dream Fueld Became a nightmare.” It’s with Masufumi Takubo and Jungmin Kung. The message: Prohibit Reprocessing of Nuclear Waste!
Radiation effects on women
Thank you to Dr. Richard Denton – Co-Chair of North America International Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War and Chair of Rotarians 4 Nuclear Ban – for sharing Dr. Mary Olson’s recent “Disproportionate Impact of Radiation and Radiation Regulation” article with Project Save the World Team Members. This article identifies critical and valuable information pertaining to gender-based bias in radiation safety guidelines.
Dr. Mary Olson is the Chair of the Gender and Radiation Impact Project.
A Full Version of the Article is Available through Dr. Olson’s Gender and Radiation Impact Project Website: https://www.genderandradiation.org/success-stories
Article Abstract:
“Reference Man is used for generic evaluation of ionizing radiation impacts, regulation, and nuclear licensing decisions made by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (US NRC). The United States Code of Federal Regulations, 2018 edition, Chapter 10: Part 20 ‘Standards for Protection Against Radiation’ contains eight references to ‘reference man’ as the basis for regulation and calculation of radiation exposure. The document was accessed January 9, 2019 (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2018-title10-vol1/pdf/CFR-2018-title10-vol1-part20.pdf). Findings from 60 years of A-bomb survivor data show that Reference Man does not represent the human life cycle with respect to harm from radiation exposure. Findings reported here show females are more harmed by radiation, particularly when exposed as young girls, than is predicted by use of Reference Man; the difference is a much as 10-fold. Since females have been ignored in regulatory analysis, this has resulted in systematic under-reporting of harm from ionizing radiation exposure in the global population. A critique is also offered on the US Environmental Protection Agency’s attempt to include females in its regulation. Recommendations for interim regulation to provide better protection, and questions for further study are offered.”
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dfyosBnR8l1RoWAN8AU3dIBN9endTEOU/view
What will Biden do?
Biden has been a moderate all his life. During the primaries, the liberal wing of his party were far from enthusiastic about his proposals. However, the turmoil of the spring and summer have made it apparent that this is a unique moment: Voters are demanding jobs to offset the economic hardships brought by Covid-19 and revealed by the Black Lives Matter movement. And the way to produce jobs best is by investing in renewable energy and in measures that incentivize greater efficiency in transportation, commercial buildings, and households.
In the spring, Biden proposed to spend $1.7 trillion to make the US carbon neutral by 2050 — but this was not enough to satisfy young voters. Now, having consulted other members of his party, including Bernie Sanders (who had promoted the stronger New Green Deal), Biden has upped his proposal to $2 trillion, and it will be spent over a period of four years, largely in disadvantaged areas. He also intends, of course, to rejoin the Paris Accord.
[read more]
The new, stronger plan will surely attract considerable support, both from the youth and even from moderate Republicans, many of whom have come to acknowledge that climate change is real and is caused by human activities. Polls show that about half of the American voters regard change as urgently needed to avoid the worst effects of global warming. Nevertheless, this issue has slipped in the priorities of voters during the past few months of turmoil, so that only a third of them now deem it “very important.”
Possibly in response to the concerns of the oil and gas industry, Biden’s proposal does fall short of those of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. He does not call for a ban on fracking natural gas, nor does he declare that nuclear power will have no future.
Biden’s policies nevertheless stand in sharp contrast to those of Donald Trump, who has done everything possible to relax Obama’s regulations and permit more carbon pollution. Only this week, a new audit has been authorized for Trump’s changes in the Environmental Protection Agency. This was done, explicitly acknowledging the shortcomings of the research that supposedly justified Trump’s looser rules. It had been done too hastily, in an effort to implement them fully and quickly so that, if the Democrats come back to power they will be unable to re-establish their more stringent regulations.
If Biden’s proposals are not everything that the environmentalists want, they are at least stronger than any previous president would have attempted. Even Bernie Sanders is optimistic, as also most US voters probably will be in November.
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Joe, Pay Attention to Ed!
Sorry, Val, but I think. you’re wrong. Biden has to win in the swing states that Hillary lost. Those are midwestern states that are socially quite conservative. They still might vote for Trump, especially if Biden gets enthusiastic about what Trump calls “socialist” ideas.
Germany Gets Both: No Nuclear, Less CO2
I’m sharing this article by M.V. Ramana and Solène Delumeau, Energy Intelligence, July 2020
This May, a 1,100 megawatt coal-fired power plant was commissioned in Germany. On Twitter, in the thread started by Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager who inspired the climate strike, many responded by connecting this decision to the German government’s decision to phase out nuclear power. This connection has become all too common since 2011, when German Chancellor Angela Merkel reiterated commitment to the phaseout, which was originally signed into law in 2002. The oft-repeated message is that the decision to shut down nuclear power resulted in Germany increasing its use of coal and thus increasing carbon emissions. This is misleading. Germany’s progress in bringing down emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) from its electricity sector by increasing uptake of renewable energy — while simultaneously lowering both coal and nuclear energy generation — has been quite remarkable and shows that a nuclear phaseout and climate mitigation are compatible.
[read more]
The data underlying this assertion are out there for anyone who wants to look, for example with the International Energy Agency (IEA). The IEA’s analysis of global CO2 emissions in 2019 was forceful in its account of Germany’s evolution: The country, it said, “spearheaded the decline in emissions in the European Union … Its [Germany’s] emissions fell by 8% to 620 Mt [metric tons] of CO2, a level not seen since the 1950s, when the German economy was around 10 times smaller.”
The emission level of 620 tons in 2019 is down from 940 tons in 1990, 818 tons in 2002 when the country legislated the nuclear phaseout, and 731 tons in 2011. There was a slight increase, when it went up to 764 tons in 2013, which was roughly the value in 2010, but then it declined again in 2014 to 723 tons, below the 2011 value.
The brief uptick in emissions in 2013 was, of course, related to the use of coal in the electricity sector. Here, too, this metric has had its ups and downs, but it has been mostly down. Again, going back to 1990, Germany generated 322 terawatt hours of electricity from coal, which came down slightly to 307 TWh by 2002, and further down to 272 TWh in 2011. Between 2011 and 2013, electricity generation from coal went up by about 10%, to 299 TWh.
Since then coal-fired generation has been declining consistently, to 241 TWh in 2018. In 2019, there was, as the IEA records, “a drop in output of more than 25% year on year as electricity demand declined and generation from renewables, especially wind (+11%), increased. With a share of over 40%, renewables for the very first time generated more electricity in 2019 than Germany’s coal-fired power stations.”
The story of coal use is complicated by the fact that between 2011 and 2019, Germany brought online about 9.7 gigawatts of new coal-fired power plant capacity but about 3.8 GW were retired. A further 21 coal power stations that were planned ended up being cancelled. The new plants are the precursors to Datteln 4. And like Datteln 4, whose foundation stone was laid in November 2007, these plants that came on line between 2011 and 2019 dated back to before the 2011 Fukushima accident.
During this period, nuclear power has declined significantly. That source accounted for 165 TWh or 31% of Germany’s electricity generation back in 2002, according to the Fraunhofer Institute, but only 76 TWh in 2018. In the first half of 2020, the share of nuclear power in overall electricity generation was down to 12%. As the phaseout goes to completion in 2022, it will come down to zero.
Behind the declines in nuclear power, coal power, and CO2 emissions is the tremendous growth in Germany’s wind, solar and biomass power capacity. That growth, in turn, can be traced to when the nuclear phaseout law came into effect. Data from the IEA show that between 2002 and 2018, the amount of electricity generated by wind, solar and biomass has grown by more than an order of magnitude, from 19 TWh to 203 TWh. During the decade before the phase-out law, the contribution of wind, solar power and biomass to Germany’s total electricity generation increased by only 2%.
The following decade (2001-11), that share increased by 14%, and from 2011-18, by a further 15%, according to the IEA. In 2019, renewables generated over 40% of Germany’s electricity. Wind power dominates, accounting for over half of this generation. Biomass and solar power have contributed roughly equal amounts of generation in the past few years.
The figure below graphs the changes in the amount of power generated by these sources of electricity between 1990 and 2019. It shows clearly that in the last few years, increases in renewable energy generation have more than compensated for decreases in electricity generated by coal and nuclear power.
Change in Main German Electricity Sources, 1990-2018
There is another important trend associated with this growth of renewable electricity generation: Since 2014, Germany’s exports of electricity have risen substantially. As one might expect from the dependence on weather of renewable sources of electricity, there is a strong seasonal dependence. Germany typically imports a little from other European countries during the summer, and exports during the rest of the year. By and large, the exports are worth more per unit (euros per megawatt hours) than the imports. Thus, Germany is not dumping cheap renewable electricity and buying expensive fossil or nuclear electricity.
Finally, how has Germany done by standards it set for itself? Since 2007, German government sources have mentioned a target of a 40% decline in its emissions in 2020 relative to the emissions in 1990. The large drop in 2019 has meant that Germany’s emissions are now almost 36% lower than 1990 levels. With the unanticipated decline due to Covid-19, Germany may end up reaching its original reduction target after all.
Just as with any policy measure and its implementation, Germany’s nuclear phaseout and Energiewende can be faulted for errors of commission or omission. But the data are unambiguous: Germany has reduced its emissions of CO2 and its use of coal substantially while phasing out the use of nuclear energy, which comes with its own set of hazards and environmental impacts. The bottom line: Phasing out nuclear power is quite compatible with mitigating climate change.
M.V. Ramana is the Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, and the author of The Power of Promise: Examining Nuclear Energy in India. Solène Delumeau is an undergraduate research assistant and Environmental Sciences major at the University of British Columbia.
http://www.energyintel.com/pages/worldopinionarticle.aspx?DocID=1077081
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Disagreements about Nuclear Waste
But there is an opposing view among people who are worried more about the dangers of nuclear weapons proliferation. As long as the waste is above ground, it will be a great temptation, they say, to those who want to reprocess it and recover the plutonium for other purposes. The risks of reprocessing, they say, are even worse than the risk of exposure to nuclear contamination. But we don’t hear much about this dispute, which is low-key. We ought to talk about it. It’s important.
Whoopee???
Maybe, but right now the anti-nuclear power activists are celebrating because plans have been abandoned for the deep waste repository that was planned for northern Ontario. Back to the drawing boards!
Is this Another Yucca Mountain Debate?
Nobody wants radioactive waste in their area. Many Navaho people are suffering already from radioactive contamination. These debates go on and on endlessly. Is the Ontario repository issue going to be as prolonged as the Yucca Mountain controversy? Or maybe it already has lasted that long. They should have left the uranium in the ground all along.
Update me fast, please
Who do you think should worry more — the people of Peterborough or the people living near the Lansdowne plant in Toronto? And where does the decision-making process stand now, in the summer of 2020?
Here is George Monbiot’s scathing review of Michael Moore’s film, Planet of the Humans
How did Michael Moore become a hero to climate deniers and the far right?
The filmmaker’s latest venture is an excruciating mishmash of environment falsehoods and plays into the hands of those he once opposed
Published in The Guardian, Thu 7 May 2020 11.28 BST
Denial never dies; it just goes quiet and waits. Today, after years of irrelevance, the climate science deniers are triumphant. Long after their last, desperate claims had collapsed, when they had traction only on “alt-right” conspiracy sites, a hero of the left turns up and gives them more than they could have dreamed of.
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Planet of the Humans, whose executive producer and chief promoter is Michael Moore, now has more than 6 million views on YouTube. The film does not deny climate science. But it promotes the discredited myths that deniers have used for years to justify their position. It claims that environmentalism is a self-seeking scam, doing immense harm to the living world while enriching a group of con artists. This has long been the most effective means by which denial – most of which has been funded by the fossil fuel industry – has been spread. Everyone hates a scammer.
And yes, there are scammers. There are real issues and real conflicts to be explored in seeking to prevent the collapse of our life support systems. But they are handled so clumsily and incoherently by this film that watching it is like seeing someone start a drunken brawl over a spilled pint, then lamping his friends when they try to restrain him. It stumbles so blindly into toxic issues that Moore, former champion of the underdog, unwittingly aligns himself with white supremacists and the extreme right.
Occasionally, the film lands a punch on the right nose. It is right to attack the burning of trees to make electricity. But when the film’s presenter and director, Jeff Gibbs, claims, “I found only one environmental leader willing to reject biomass and biofuels”, he can’t have been looking very far. Some people have been speaking out against them ever since they became a serious proposition (since 2004 in my case). Almost every environmental leader I know opposes the burning of fresh materials to generate power.
There are also some genuine and difficult problems with renewable energy, particularly the mining of the necessary materials. But the film’s attacks on solar and wind power rely on a series of blatant falsehoods. It claims that, in producing electricity from renewables, “You use more fossil fuels to do this than you’re getting benefit from it. You would have been better off just burning fossil fuels in the first place”. This is flat wrong. On average, a solar panel generates 26 units of solar energy for every unit of fossil energy required to build and install it. For wind turbines the ratio is 44 to one.
Planet of the Humans also claims that you can’t reduce fossil fuel use through renewable energy: coal is instead being replaced by gas. Well, in the third quarter of 2019, renewables in the UK generated more electricity than coal, oil and gas plants put together. As a result of the switch to renewables in this country, the amount of fossil fuel used for power generation has halved since 2010. By 2025, the government forecasts, roughly half our electricity will come from renewables, while gas burning will drop by a further 40%. To hammer home its point, the film shows footage of a “large terminal to import natural gas from the United States” that “Germany just built”. Germany has no such terminal. The footage was shot in Turkey.
There is also a real story to be told about the co-option and capture of some environmental groups by the industries they should hold to account. A remarkable number of large conservation organisations take money from fossil fuel companies. This is a disgrace. But rather than pinning the blame where it lies, Planet of the Humans concentrates its attacks on Bill McKibben, the co-founder of 350.org, who takes no money from any of his campaigning work. It’s an almost comic exercise in misdirection, but unfortunately it has horrible, real-world consequences, as McKibben now faces even more threats and attacks than he confronted before.
But this is by no means the worst of it. The film offers only one concrete solution to our predicament: the most toxic of all possible answers. “We really have got to start dealing with the issue of population … without seeing some sort of major die-off in population, there’s no turning back.”
Yes, population growth does contribute to the pressures on the natural world. But while the global population is rising by 1% a year, consumption, until the pandemic, was rising at a steady 3%. High consumption is concentrated in countries where population growth is low. Where population growth is highest, consumption tends to be extremely low. Almost all the growth in numbers is in poor countries largely inhabited by black and brown people. When wealthy people, such as Moore and Gibbs, point to this issue without the necessary caveats, they are saying, in effect, “it’s not Us consuming, it’s Them breeding.” It’s not hard to see why the far right loves this film.
Population is where you go when you haven’t thought your argument through. Population is where you go when you don’t have the guts to face the structural, systemic causes of our predicament: inequality, oligarchic power, capitalism. Population is where you go when you want to kick down.
We have been here many times before. Dozens of films have spread falsehoods about environmental activists and ripped into green technologies, while letting fossil fuels off the hook. But never before have these attacks come from a famous campaigner for social justice, rubbing our faces in the dirt.[/read]
George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist.
Radioactivity in Port Hope
Here are excerpts of an article by Robert Del Tredici and Gordon Edwards
Glimpses of Nuclear Ontario
Author: Del Tredici, Robert and Edwards, Gordon
Canadian Centre for Architecture
Cameco.
“Eighteen thousand people live in picturesque Port Hope on the north shore of Lake Ontario, an hour’s drive from Toronto. The town is host to one of the oldest and largest uranium chemical processing facilities on the planet, located not far from the downtown shopping district. In the background of the image above are the two key uranium conversion facilities: the smaller structure, on the left, processes uranium for domestic use; the larger building, on the right, processes uranium for exports worldwide.
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The Cameco Uranium Conversion Plant began its life in 1932 as a radium refinery. In 1942 it started refining uranium for the Manhattan Project. During these years, the refinery dumped radioactive waste directly into the adjacent harbour, where the Port Hope Yacht Club still moors its leisure craft. Uranium continued to be processed at Port Hope for the US nuclear weapons program until 1965.
Uranium mined in Saskatchewan is first processed in northern Ontario’s Blind River refinery, where it is turned into uranium trioxide gel. The gel is then shipped to Port Hope, where it is chemically converted into other uranium compounds. Uranium dioxide (15 percent of Cameco’s output) is produced in the building on the left; it is later fabricated into fuel rods for domestic use. In the larger building on the right, uranium hexafluoride (85 percent of Cameco’s output) is produced for export. The hexafluoride is shipped to enrichment plants that produce low-enriched uranium (LEU) for fuel in light-water reactors throughout the world, and highly enriched uranium (HEU) that can be used for nuclear submarine fuel, medical isotope production, and nuclear weapons.
St. Mary’s Elementary School had to be evacuated in 1975 when radioactive radon gas was detected inside. Radon levels in the cafeteria were higher than the limits allowed in an underground uranium mine. This was because the radioactive gas was being continually generated by radium-bearing sandy wastes that had been used as fill in the school playground and around the school’s foundations. The local uranium refinery had made these radioactive materials freely available to Port Hope’s citizens in the late 1950s.
In 1975, the contaminated material around St. Mary’s School was excavated and trucked to a local radioactive dump. Today, one of the most expensive municipal environmental cleanups in Canadian history is underway in Port Hope as radioactive wastes have been identified at hundreds of properties and in local ravines. Over one million cubic metres of material have been located so far. The wastes will be collected, repackaged, transported, and stored in an engineered long-term facility just north of the town, in the village of Welcome. The project also calls for dredging the harbour to recover much of its radioactive sediment. This cleanup is a joint venture between the Canadian federal government and the town of Port Hope, at the estimated cost of $1.2 billion.”
https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/articles/issues/19/the-planet-is-the-client/40788/glimpses-of-nuclear-ontario
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Pandemic in the Nuclear Forces
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists reminds us that Covid 19 affects the nuclear industries too. Does that worry you?
How nuclear forces worldwide are dealing with the coronavirus pandemic
By John Krzyzaniak
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, April 14, 2020
Excerpt:
In recent weeks, the coronavirus outbreak has elicited at least a few tone-deaf comments from top US defense officials about the readiness of their nuclear forces. In mid-March, the commander of US Strategic Command, Adm. Charles Richard, reassured his audience that the United States’ nuclear forces had not been adversely affected by the pandemic and that they “remain ready to execute the nation’s strategic deterrence mission.” In effect, Adm. Richard was telling his audience that the United States was still capable of launching a massive nuclear retaliation that would undoubtedly kill millions. Similarly, at the beginning of April, the commander of the US Air Force’s Global Strike Command told Popular Mechanics that, despite the COVID-19 outbreak, “its nukes are still ready to fly.” These officials were apparently oblivious to the notion that, with the pandemic already causing enough fear and dread on its own, now may not be the best time to remind the general public about other ways the world could end.
The rhetoric notwithstanding, the US nuclear mission and its analogues around the world rely heavily on people, and people are exactly what the virus is after. Just a few days after Adm. Richard gave his briefing, Newsweek reported that “units feeding [US Strategic Command] have a cumulative 106 uniformed personnel not on duty due to coronavirus, either because of confirmed cases or ‘protective self-quarantine.’” On April 9, Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at Federation of American Scientists, tweeted that all US nuclear bases except one had confirmed cases of COVID-19.
[read more]
https://thebulletin.org/2020/04/how-nuclear-forces-worldwide-are-dealing-with-the-coronavirus-pandemic
Here are links to other articles about this issue:
Title: COVID-19 and the Doomsday Clock: Observations on managing global risk
Author: Bulletin Science and Security Board
Publication(s): Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Date: 15 April 2020
Link: https://thebulletin.org/2020/04/covid-19-and-the-doomsday-clock-observations-on-managing-global-risk/
Title: Another victim of the pandemic: trust in the government
Author: Macfarlane, Allison
Publication(s): Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Date: 13 April 2020
Link: https://thebulletin.org/2020/04/another-victim-of-the-pandemic-trust-in-the-government/
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How risky is it to leave these things unattended?
Are you sure it would be safer having these guys ON THE JOB than at home sick? I don’t think the missiles will go off on their own. Someone has to launch them, and if nobody is around to do it, all the better! I have read things about how the missile crews are the most psychologically screwed up military units anywhere. (That’s understandable. Who would want such a job?) But maybe there is a real need for a staff to mind the reactors and see that they are kept in good repair.
New England Survives Without Nuclear Power
By Michael Steinberg
OBrag, 17 April 2020
Article Excerpt(s):
“On April 3 the Connecticut Mirror reported “Most New England nuclear power offline due to timing fluke problem.” There are only two nuke plants still (sometimes) operating in the region, Seabrook in New Hampshire with one reactor and Millstone in Connecticut with two.
On March 31 the 1245 Megawatt shut down for refueling. The next day the 1230 Unit 3 reactor at Millstone had a mishap that forced it to shut down as well.
As a result, by April 3, the Mirror reported, the grid showed nuclear at 8% and natural gas (usually derived with fracking) at a whopping 68%. Nuclear usually contributed a third of the electricity to the grid. So at this time New England was without 75% of its nuclear power. Only the 45 year old Millstone 2 reactor was still going. Nuclear reactors are designed to last only 40 years.
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Refueling involves shutting down a reactor to swap out old nuclear fuel and replacing it with new, as well as doing required maintenance. This typically takes a month or more and is required every year and a half or two. Millstone 3’s refueling is set for next October. During refueling 1000 or more are added to the workforce. Millstone’s usual workforce is 6-700.
The Mirror reported that , due to the coronavirus threat, some staff are working at home. Those still on site are having their temperatures taken when they arrive and leave work. Six foot sections on plant floors are marked off to encourage some social distancing on the job.
Power Magazine reported last month that the nuclear industry is asking the Department of Energy to designate refueling workers as “essential.” It also wants refueling workers from other countries allowed in, and hotels and restaurants kept open to house and feed them. In addition, it wants priority for safety items such as surgeons gloves and virus test kits.
Sources: Connecticut Mirror, ctmirror.org; Power Magazine, powermag.com.
Virus Takes Down UK Nuke Facility
On March 19 the Guardian UK reported “Sellafield nuclear site to close due to coronavirus.”
Sellafield is a nuclear facility in Wales operated by Magnavox since 1964. There “spent fuel” is “reprocessed.” The nuclear fuel is no longer good enough to power nuclear reactors. But its uranium and plutonium can still be extracted and then made into new viable nuclear fuel–or nuclear weapons. In the process lots of nuclear waste is released into the environment.
The Guardian reported, the “plant will begin a controlled shutdown after 8% of the staff is self isolating to prevent the spread of the coronavirus in Cambria (Wales.)”
Magnavox “revealed that a staff member had tested positive for the virus and another worker suspected of having the disease is in quarantine.” Sellafield’s total workforce is 11,000.
The Guardian also reported that the number in quarantine included those in isolation as well as those with underlying health problems undergoing social distancing. Sellafield already is slated for permanent shutdown later this year. In the meantime the remainder of the workforce will either be working from home, or, Magnavox said, “Given the nature of your work, you will need to continue to attend your workplace.” Source: guardian.com.”
Link: https://obrag.org/2020/04/new-england-survives-without-nuclear-power
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Okay, they have a point. It says that the reactors have to be refueled, and that does require a maintenance staff. So what happens if someone forgets to refuel one of them?
Sellafield’s Own Plutonium
Britain has 139 tons of plutonium. That’s a real problem.
By Christopher Fichtlscherer and Moritz Kütt
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 17 April 2020
Sellafield, UK.
Article Excerpt(s):
“The United Kingdom’s last plutonium reprocessing plant, B205, located in Sellafield in northern England, will shut down by the end of 2020. It will bring an end to the era of plutonium separation in the country, which began 68 years ago. Because the United Kingdom never used any of the material it recouped from reprocessing except in nuclear weapons, today it has amassed a stockpile of almost 139 metric tons of separated plutonium.
This creates lasting problems: Plutonium stored in Sellafield is highly toxic and poses a permanent risk of proliferation. It is enough material to build tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. According to parliamentary estimates, storage will cost the British government about 73 million pounds a year for the next century. But after decades of public and private consultation, there is still no accepted plan for its disposition. In the meantime, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority is working on the consolidation of the stockpiles in Sellafield and developing the capability to retreat the packages to allow for long-term storage once the government makes a final decision on permanent disposal. The United Kingdom views the material as a resource and is pursuing options that involve burning the plutonium in reactors, even though multiple assessments have shown risks associated with such a choice, namely immature concepts and technology. A better alternative would be to treat it as waste and begin planning for its permanent immobilization and burial.
Where did it come from? In the beginning, the British plutonium separation program was justified by military needs. A few years later, nuclear euphoria led to an increasing number of civil nuclear power plants and to dreams of nuclear-powered cars and planes. It was predicted that uranium resources would not be able to fulfill the need. As a result, the idea of a “closed” fuel cycle was born: instead of using nuclear fuel once and throwing it away, the spent fuel is reprocessed and reused in (mostly fast) reactors. In theory, this would allow greater utilization of uranium. However, the concept has never been demonstrated on an industrial scale, and only a few countries still aim at closing the nuclear fuel cycle.
From 1956 until 2015 the United Kingdom operated 26 Magnox reactors for commercial use. Magnox reactors are fueled with natural uranium, moderated by graphite, cooled by carbon dioxide gas, and designed in a way for efficient plutonium production. A pilot reprocessing plant, B204, started operation in 1952 and was replaced in 1964 by the B205 reprocessing plant. Combined, the two plants have separated more than 85 metric tons of plutonium from spent fuel.
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In 1976, the United Kingdom started operating a new reactor class, the Advanced Gas-cooled Reactor, and 15 such reactors still operate today. To reprocess spent fuel from these reactors as well as spent fuel from overseas, the United Kingdom opened the Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant in 1995. Its operation record is a disaster: It never reached planned throughputs, had a serious leakage of radioactive material in 2005, and was much more expensive than originally intended. Consequently, it was shut down in 2018 before reaching the end of its planned service life—and after separating only 23 metric tons of plutonium.
But what happened to the fast breeder reactors that were supposed to burn up reprocessed fuel and close the nuclear fuel cycle? There are several reasons why there are only two fast reactors commercially operating, the Russian-designed BN-600 and BN-800. First, nuclear energy did not expand as foreseen in the 1950s and 1960s, while at the same time new uranium resources were discovered, easing worries about a dwindling uranium supply. Second, multi-cycled use of spent fuel has proven to be far more difficult than expected, and there are some risks inherent only to fast reactors. Finally, there is the latent proliferation risk of the technology to separate plutonium and uranium from the spent fuel.
Where will it go? Today, the United Kingdom’s civilian stockpile contains 139 metric tons of plutonium, including 23 metric tons owned by other countries, mostly Japan. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority has discussed two disposition options. First is the reuse of plutonium in reactors. Reuse is touted as a proliferation-resistant option because the spent fuel would be too radioactive to handle, at least at first. Second is immobilization. Here, the plutonium is mixed with other materials that reduce the risk of leaching and complicate extraction. Potentially, the radioactive waste in the mix could also serve as a toxic obstacle to proliferation. Both options would still ultimately require disposal in a deep geological repository.
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s preferred option still seems to be the reuse of the plutonium in mixed-oxide fuel for light water reactors. However, such an option depends on the availability and willingness of reactor operators to use such fuel. And not all operators are keen on the idea: EDF, the French-owned utility company that operates Hinkley Point C, the first nuclear power plant built in Britain in decades, denied the suggestion to consider the use of mixed-oxide fuel in 2013.
Alternatively, the plutonium might be used in reactors that, according to their vendors, are better suited to cope with the plutonium stockpile. These could be either a CANDU-EC6 heavy water reactor or the small, fast, sodium-cooled reactor concept PRISM. Using mixed-oxide fuel in CANDU reactors seems viable, but the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority assesses no potential benefit compared to using the same fuel in a light water reactor—at greater implementation risk. In March 2019, the authority officially removed the PRISM reactor from the list of viable options, though even as early as 2011 it was stated internally that the “technology maturity for the fuel, reactor, and recycling plant are considered to be low.”
Nevertheless, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority confirms that it will continue to monitor fast reactor programs.
Leaving aside the viability of fuel production, costs, and everything related to actual operation of the PRISM reactor, we conducted an analysis of GE Hitachi’s claims that PRISM “could conceivably make the entire UK plutonium stockpile proliferation-resistant in 20 years” by irradiation. Our calculations show that the claim is highly optimistic. Using plutonium as a reactor fuel has two effects: Some plutonium is burned, and the remaining is left in highly radioactive spent fuel. The radioactivity creates a barrier for malicious actors intending to steal and separate the plutonium from that fuel—providing proliferation resistance. However, due to radioactive decay, this barrier continuously decreases, while treatment of other parts of the stockpile is underway. Even though our study’s findings apply specifically to the PRISM reactor, we anticipate similar effects from other irradiation options. In the time it takes to treat the United Kingdom’s massive stockpile in reactors, the already treated material will slowly lose its proliferation resistance.
Why should the public sector continue to pay money for “new” reactor concepts—sometimes under development for decades—when it is not even clear whether these concepts might solve the problem at hand? The United Kingdom has to find a solution for its plutonium stockpile, and quickly. The British government, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, and reactor operators in general should accept that separated plutonium is a burden, not a resource, and authority should again take a closer look at immobilization options. These do not have the sheen of new, high-tech solutions like burning the plutonium in specially-tailored reactor concepts. But given that action is urgently needed, established and working concepts should be the way forward.”
Link: https://thebulletin.org/2020/04/britain-has-139-tons-of-plutonium-thats-a-real-problem
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This says there are some risks inherent in fast breeder reactors. Could someone please spell out what they are? I mean, apart from the risk involved in reprocessing, which is of course a sufficient reason for not recycling the waste products of reactors.
Let me get this straight. They are going to close down Sellafield but they haven’t decided what to do with the radioactive stuff? Well, they’d better make up their minds before long!
Russia, China Willing To Fund Nuclear Projects In Africa
Farai Shawn Matiashe
“Faced with power shortfalls, demands for greener energy and drought threats to hydropower, a growing number of African countries are considering a shift to an unexpected power source – nuclear energy.
South Africa has the continent’s only commercial nuclear power plant. But according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a third of the 30 countries around the world considering adopting nuclear power are in Africa.
[read more]
Ghana, Kenya, Egypt, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria and Sudan have engaged with the IAEA to assess their readiness for a nuclear programme.
Algeria, Tunisia, Uganda and Zambia are mulling the possibility, according to the agency.
Altogether, at least seven sub-Saharan African countries have signed agreements to explore nuclear power with the backing of Russia, according to public announcements and the World Nuclear Association, an industry body.
“Africa is embracing nuclear science in general,” said Colin Namalambo, a commissioner of the African Commission on Nuclear Energy (ACNE), in an interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation during a recent meeting in Accra on nuclear power opportunities.
That growing interest comes despite evidence that solar power and wind energy might be a cheaper and greener way to expand electricity production in Africa, where one person in three still lacks access, most of them in rural areas.
Benson Kibiti, director of communications for Power for All, which aims to get reliable energy to most of the 1.1 billion people globally over the next decade, said off-grid solar was the smartest economic choice for Africa.
“While I agree that the continent is in dire need of energy, with 600 million people still living without access to electricity, it takes 10 years and billions of dollars to commission a nuclear power station,” he said in an email.
That makes nuclear power a “prohibitively expensive” choice, he said, arguing that “off-grid solar is and should be Africa’s energy future”.
But countries from Egypt to Ghana are pushing ahead with nuclear plans, arguing such power is low-carbon emitting and can provide a reliable baseline of energy to complement renewables such as solar and wind.
Nuclear is “clean and sustainable”, Prince Akor Larbi, a technician with the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on the sidelines of the Accra meeting in March.
In southern Africa, the push to consider nuclear power is being driven in part by the drying of hydroelectric dams as a result of the climate crisis.
Those dams – particularly Lake Kariba – provide a majority of the electricity to many southern Africa countries, including Zimbabwe and Zambia.
The Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority early last year introduced 18-hour load shedding after water levels fell in the lake, and is still struggling with severe power shortages.
Zambia is now considering adding nuclear power to shore up its energy mix and provide a stable base of power, said Mwape Chipala, an energy ministry spokesperson.
“This is in order to have security of supply from all sources of energy and to prevent what is happening in Lake Kariba as a result of hydropower dependence,” he said.
Getting nuclear power isn’t cheap, Chipala admitted, but both Russia and China have shown interest in financing any nuclear project in the country, he said.
The country hopes to establish its first nuclear power plant over the next 10 to 15 years, he said, with hopes it could supply power for five decades.
Egypt aims to begin constructing it’s first nuclear power plant in July, with Russian funding, according to local media.
Gillane Allam, an ambassador from the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs, said at the Accra meeting that nuclear energy would help end power cuts crippling economies across the continent.
Akachukwu Okafor, principal partner for Change Partners International, an energy and sustainability consultancy in Nigeria, said nuclear energy was not the solution to Africa’s problems but could be part of it, alongside renewables.
What works “varies from country to country”, he said in a telephone interview.
Countries such as Kenya and Ethiopia are looking at nuclear power as part of a broader effort – which also includes solar and wind power – to expand their power grid in a low-carbon way.
In terms of expanding energy access to those without it – about one in three Africans according to the World Bank – Kibiti said off-grid renewable projects are a smart choice as they do not require expensive connections to the national grid.
“Given that close to 80% of Africans reside in rural areas, decentralised renewable energy makes sense,” he said.
Solar energy is also safer than nuclear energy as there is no environmentally hazardous radioactive waste, and no huge financial outlay for construction, Kibiti said.
Lassina Zerbo, executive secretary of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation, said any investment in nuclear technology in Africa would require strong cooperation with neighbouring countries, a culture of transparency and accountability and a willingness to work together to overcome technological and security issues.
He said a lack of cooperation among African countries was a key challenge holding back efforts to establish nuclear technology on the continent.
Namalambo, of the ACNE, said there was need to have legal frameworks in place before African countries ventured into nuclear energy – including frameworks on nuclear non-proliferation, safety and security.”
https://city-press.news24.com/Business/russia-china-willing-to-fund-nuclear-projects-as-several-african-countries-explore-controversial-power-source-20200410
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I have never been to Africa, so maybe I am just badly informed, but I think most of Africa is tropical, isn’t it? So they must have even more sunshine than the people in Europe or North America. Wouldn’t it be smarter to harness that sunshine than build reactors?
Sure, Ruth. And cheaper and quicker too. It will take ages to build new reactors, but solar and wind can be done much faster. Maybe there is a problem with storage, though. That’s the only logical excuse.
Bathing in Radon!
Radon baths are considered a therapeutic health treatment in several Central and European countries. These baths are with water infused with radon, often sourced from nearby mines and springs. This is alarming as the radon will eventually become aerosolized and subsequently be inhaled, where it can cause significant damage due to alpha radiation (among other classes of radiation) emissions.
Despite this risk of inhalation, a number of national and regional health agencies subsidize this therapeutic treatment – which is allegedly particularly popular among residents of former Soviet states and more recently, Middle Easterners. Two of the most popular sites for this treatment are Jácymov, Czechia and Khmilnyk, Ukraine – where a number of spas offer the service.
While employees of the spa and participants of the allegedly therapeutic treatments laud the radon baths, researchers elsewhere have expressed concerns of the risks of radon exposure (which is known to be linked to increased rates of lung cancer), particularly via the inhalation of aerosolized radon during baths.
Why is this being subsidized by health agencies?
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You can read more about radon baths here.
Title: Thousands Of People Are ‘Treated’ With Radon Baths Every Year In Ukraine
Author: Masis, Julie
Publication(s): Public Radio International (PRI)
Date: 8 July 2016
Link: https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-07-08/ukraine-thousands-people-are-treated-radon-baths-every-year
Title: A Spa Where Patients Bathe In Radioactive Water
Author: Vickery, Matthew
Publication(s): BBC Future
Date: 7 March 2018
Link: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180306-a-spa-where-patients-bathe-in-radiactive-water
A short BBC documentary about Jácymov, Czechia additionally discusses radon baths, in addition to the towns mining history.
Title: The Radioactive ‘Capital’ Of The World
Author: BBC Reel
Publication(s): BBC Reel
Date: 4 February 2020
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_LXYsdY9O4
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Now I am wondering whether I was given such a bath. Back in 1983 I was a guest of the Czechoslovak peace movement, along with about a thousand other foreign activists. They entertained us royally and took busloads of us around the country in an extra day of outings. One place was to a resort town famous as a spa. I don’t remember the name of the place but the doctor in charge of the place gave each of us a therapeutic bath. I remember getting into a tub filled with bubbly water. He came in to check me out and tell me what to expect, etc. I never expected a doctor to be involved in such things. It must have been a special mineral water, but I forget what they told me. I hope it wasn’t radon.
Wildfire near Chernobyl
In April 2020 forest fires are out of control near Chernobyl. They were caused by someone burning garbage and grass. If they damage Pripyat, this would threaten tourism revenue, which has become a significant component of the local economy since the disaster.
As I write, fires are approximately two kilometers from the former nuclear power plant and radioactive waste site.
Area Of Chernobyl Wildfire Triples In Size
TASS: Russian News Agency, 7 April 2020
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Title: Wildfires ‘Edge Closer To Chernobyl Nuclear Plant’
Author: BBC News
Publication(s): BBC News
Date: 13 April 2020
Link: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52274242
Title: Ukraine: Wildfires Draw Dangerously Close To Chernobyl Site
Author: Roth, Andrew
Publication(s): The Guardian
Date: 13 April 2020
Link: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/13/ukraine-wildfires-close-chernobyl-nuclear-site
Title: Chernobyl Wildfire Rages On, Despite Almost 400 Tonnes Of Water Dropped Already
Author: TASS: Russian News Agency
Publication(s): TASS: Russian News Agency
Date: 13 April 2020
Link: https://tass.com/emergencies/1143805
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Renfrew Citizens Want Nuclear Safety
Groups Urge Trudeau To Fix Serious Gaps In Nuclear Safety And Governance
By Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County and Area, 8 April 2020
Notes: Dr. Gordon Edwards – the author of the 3 April 2020 letter referenced in this news release – has been a participant in several episodes of Project Save the World’s podcast. Dr. Edwards’ 3 April 2020 letter – additionally linked below – is available here: http://ccnr.org/Letter_Trudeau_03_04_2020_e.pdf
Article Excerpt(s):
“For immediate release (Montreal, April 8, 2020) Three independent organizations — the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility and the Ottawa River Institute – have written to the Prime Minister saying that Canada’s nuclear safety standards and nuclear governance are failing to adequately protect Canadians from dozens of dangerous radioactive pollutants from nuclear facilities.
An April 3rd letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau cites serious deficiencies in Canada’s nuclear safety framework and nuclear governance that require urgent attention by government. The authors draw on the contents of a recent report to the government by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on nuclear safety in Canada.
The IAEA review of Canada’s nuclear safety framework found that “CNSC regulations do not comprehensively cover all IAEA Fundamental Safety Requirements.” The report confirmed several concerns raised previously by Canadian public interest groups.
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Specific deficiencies noted by the IAEA include:
Canada’s regulator is considering allowing future nuclear facilites (such as small modular reactors) and old radioactively contaminated nuclear reactors to be entombed and abandoned on site, a practice that is explicitly rejected by the IAEA;
The IAEA found “no evidence… of a governmental policy or strategy related to radioactive waste management”;
Canada’s nuclear legislation does not require justification of radiation risks from nuclear facilities; the IAEA says for nuclear facilities and activities to be considered justified, the benefits must be shown to outweigh the radiation risks to which they give rise;
Canada’s system for managing the transport of radioactive materials does not align with IAEA regulations;
There are problems in the ways that Canada authorizes radiation releases from nuclear facilities;
Canada’s current and proposed regulations don’t adequately protect pregnant workers, students, and apprentices from radiation risks; eg. they allow four times higher radiation doses for pregnant nuclear workers than IAEA standards.
“These deficiencies concern us very much,” said Dr. Éric Notebaert of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment. “We feel strongly that Canada is failing to adequately protect Canadians from dangerous radioactive substances that are known to cause cancers, serious chronic diseases, birth defects, and genetic damage that is passed on to future generations.”
The letter to the Prime Minister points out that these gaps in Canada’s nuclear safety practices, identified by the IAEA and others, leaves Canada vulnerable to unwise decisions on investment in new nuclear technology.
“Canada’s rush to promote and invest in small modular nuclear reactors is ill-advised” said Dr. Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, “especially when these reactors have been exempted from environmental assessment. Such reactors will produce radioactive wastes of all varieties, yet there is no policy for their safe long-term disposition. With no need to “justify” the radiation exposures from such new reactors, entrepreneurs and provinces can proceed without any explicit consideration of faster, cheaper and lower risk energy alternatives to reduce carbon emissions.”
The letter also draws attention to nuclear governance problems cited in Environmental Petition 427 to the Auditor General of Canada. These include (1) outdated and inadequate legislation, (2) inadequate government oversight, (3) lack of checks and balances, (4) a federal policy vacuum on nuclear waste and nuclear reactor decommissioning, and (5) the problem of regulatory capture on the part of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.
The authors of the letter support the recommendation in Petition 427 for the creation of a high-level, interdisciplinary, multi-stakeholder task force to advise the government on the needed reforms to nuclear governance in Canada.
Contacts:
Dr. Gordon Edwards, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility514-489-5118 cell: 514-839-7214 ccnr@web.ca
Dr. Ole Hendrickson, Ottawa River Institute613-234-0578 ole@nrtco.net
Links:
Letter to the Prime Minister, April 3, 2020:http://ccnr.org/Letter_Trudeau_03_04_2020_e.pdf
IAEA Report: https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/documents/review-missions/irrs_canada_2019_final_report.pdf
Environmental Petition 427 to the Auditor General of Canada, June 2019. Petition summary:https://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/internet/English/pet_427_e_43421.html Full text of petition: https://concernedcitizens.net/2019/11/30/environmental-petition-nuclear-governance-problems-in-canada”
Link: https://concernedcitizens.net/2020/04/08/groups-urge-trudeau-to-fix-serious-gaps-in-nuclear-safety-and-governance
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Nadezhda and the Victims of Mayak
Human rights activist Nadezhda Kutepova did significant work for the victims of Mayak in Russia until she had to flee to Paris as a human rights refugee. Watch her astonishing interview with Al Jazeera.
Nadezhda Kutepova: Life In Russia’s Secret Nuclear City
Al Jazeera, 16 December 2017
Link: https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/talktojazeera/2017/12/nadezhda-kutepova-life-russia-secret-nuclear-city-171214121737252.html
Preserving Old Nuclear Weapons Films
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is digitizing and re-analyzing old nuclear test films. Dr. Greg Spriggs – a weapons physicist – is leading the project, which has partnered with archivists and film preservation experts, including Dr. Jim Moye. Many of the old film reels documenting the nuclear weapons tests are disintegrating from age and radiation exposure.
Dr. Spriggs has noted that the early bomb yield calculations (essentially the calculations determining how powerful the nuclear weapon is/was) was done by hand (with the assistance of a Kodagraph) during the mid-twentieth century (1940s – 1960s) and often at fast speeds (likely due to military, political, and societal pressure). This has resulted in calculation errors of the bombs’ yields. In some circumstances, a bomb’s yield is/was off by as much as 30%.
Three particular reasons (among many other reasons) that this is alarming include:
1) A significant amount of the contamination in the Marshall Islands was noted to have been caused by a “miscalculation” and “misfiring” of an United States nuclear weapon or nuclear weapons in the late 1960s. Is it possible these errors – and subsequently some of the massive regional radioactive contamination – were due to inaccurately analyzed test films and rushed calculations? Dr. Spriggs notes that the cloud height – depicted in the films – can be used to estimate nuclear fallout – and that the calculations for cloud heights were additionally off by as much as 10-15%. Dr. Spriggs notes – in The Verge interview – that many scientists were simply “eyeballing” the size of the explosions at this time.
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2) How accurate is presently-used data in regards to the efficacy and power of the United States nuclear weapons fleet? I hope that nuclear weapons are never actually used, though it would be alarming to consider that some weapons may not work as intended, or may have inaccurate estimates as to their power.
3) Do other countries have similar errors in their nuclear weapons-related data?
The Seeker video on this project – linked below – alarmingly notes: “the U.S. detonated over 200 nuclear weapons to gather scientific data about their potential. That data was gospel for years, until a weapons physicist decades later found out the figures were off by huge margins.”
See also other comments on this website regarding other bomb components now aging past their lifespan – such as the aerogel FOGBANK – resulting in degradation of bomb and weapon components. Concerns were voiced in the late 2000s regarding manufacturing of the aerogel FOGBANK, as this compound is/was classified and many people who know how to make it have either died, were senile, and/or are retired. There were several articles a few years ago (pre 2007-2008) discussing concerns that the United States may not have all the relevant information to restart FOGBANK manufacturing programs. Los Alamos Laboratories in their Nuclear Weapons Journal [Issue 2, 2009] (linked below) discusses various challenges in the manufacturing of FOGBANK – which restarted in the late 2000s/early 2010s.
Archiving the nuclear test footage is important. However, it is alarming to consider that governmental discussions are oriented around modernizing nuclear weapons, rather than dismantling them.
Here are references to some articles and videos (arranged alphabetically by author’s surname / project name) discussing the nuclear weapons tests films preservation project:
How To Watch a Declassified Nuclear Test Film Like A Weapons Physicist
By Rachel Becker
The Verge, 13 May 2017
Link: https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/13/15633380/nuclear-test-film-declassified-weapons-physicist-watch
Title: Physicist Declassifies Rescued Nuclear Test Films
Author: O’Brien, Nolan
Publication(s): Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Date: 14 March 2017
Link: https://www.llnl.gov/news/physicist-declassifies-rescued-nuclear-test-films
Title: Declassified Nuclear Test Films Reveal Hidden Truths About Our Atomic Past
Author: Seeker
Publication(s): Seeker
Date: 3 August 2017
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-QVPXBcxLU
Title: Preserving the Past to Protect the Future
Author: Spriggs, Dr. Greg and Auten, Holly
Publication(s): Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Date: October/November 2017
Link: https://str.llnl.gov/october-2017/spriggs
Article Publication Link (Direct) : https://str.llnl.gov/content/pages/october-2017/pdf/10.17.1.pdf
FOGBANK-related articles:
Title: Did America Forget How To Make The H-Bomb?
Author: Baumann, Nick
Publication(s): Mother Jones
Date: 1 May 2009
Link: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/05/fogbank-america-forgot-how-make-nuclear-bombs/
Title: FOGBANK
Author: Lewis, Jeffrey
Publication(s): Arms Control Wonk
Date: 7 March 2008
Link: https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/201814/fogbank/
Title: Fogbank: Lost Knowledge Regained
Author: Lillard, Jennifer
Publication(s): Nuclear Weapons Journal [Los Alamos National Laboratory] (2009 Edition, Issue 2, Pages 20-21)
Date: 2009
Link: https://www.lanl.gov/science/weapons_journal/wj_pubs/17nwj2_09.pdf
Title: Fogbank Is Mysterious Material Used in Nukes That’s So Secret Nobody Can Say What It Is
Author: Trevithick, Joseph
Publication(s): The Drive: The Warzone
Date: 3 April 2020
Link: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/32867/fogbank-is-mysterious-material-used-in-nukes-thats-so-secret-nobody-can-say-what-it-is
Rachel Maddow additionally discusses how “no one today remembers the exact formula for making [FOGBANK]” on page 221 in Chapter 9 (called “An $8 Trillion Fungus Among Us”) in her book “Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power” (2012). As such, FOGBANK has been a bit of a reverse engineering challenge. This chapter additionally discusses a few of the many maintenance-related challenges of the US nuclear weapons fleet, such as nuclear weapons’ external components simply falling apart from age. Maddow further notes corrosion and fungal growth on external components of nuclear missiles is a particular challenge for military bases in Louisiana, due to the humid and warm subtropical climate.
Apparently – according to Maddow – the engineering of some type of fuses for nuclear weapons was forgotten as well, as the old engineers who created them passed away before anyone thought to document the manufacturing process in detail. Another concern is that nuclear weapons may be undergoing unknown or unpredictable chemical reactions within their various components as they age. Stray vapours from an ICBM already caused an explosion in the 1980s – near the Ozarks in Arkansas. Could each nuclear weapon be a ticking, dirty, time bomb (even if not intentionally used)? Yikes.
An excerpt from Maddow’s chapter is available here: https://publicism.info/politics/drift/10.html
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This is a fascinating interview – from Radio Canada International in 2010 – by Dr. Gordon Edwards on the risks of forest fires in areas with radioactive materials and/or environmental radioactive contamination. If you have ten minutes to spare, please take a listen to it.
Link: http://www.ccnr.org/Wildfires_2010_08.mp3
The Swiss are Quitting Nuclear
Switzerland Switches Off Nuclear Plant As It Begins Exit from Atomic Power Reuters, 20 December 2019
Article Excerpt:
“MUEHLEBERG, Switzerland (Reuters) – Switzerland’s Muehleberg nuclear power station went off the grid on Friday after 47 years, marking the end of an era as the shutdown starts the country’s exit from atomic power.
The 373-megawatt-capacity plant which opened in 1972 has generated enough electricity to cover the energy consumption of the nearby city of Bern for more than 100 years.
In scenes shown live on Swiss TV, at 12.30 pm (1130 GMT) a technician pressed two buttons in the control room to stop the chain reaction and deactivate the reactor, shutting down the plant for good.
The closure is the first of Switzerland’s five nuclear reactors to be shuttered following the 2011 nuclear accident in Fukushima, Japan, which triggered safety concerns about nuclear power around the world.
Neighboring Germany is due to abandon nuclear power stations by 2022, while Switzerland’s government has said it would build no new nuclear reactors and decommission its existing plants at their end of their lifespan.
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The Swiss decision to quit nuclear power was upheld in a 2017 referendum which also supported government plans to push forward sustainable energy with subsidies to develop solar, wind and hydroelectric power.
No dates have been set for the shutdown of Switzerland’s other nuclear power stations, although the Beznau plant near the German border, which dates back to 1969, is expected to be next.
As recently as 2017, Switzerland’s nuclear power stations generated a third of the country’s power, compared with around 60% from hydroelectric and 5% from renewable.
Muehleberg’s operator, the state-controlled energy company BKW, decided in October 2013 to shutter the plant, saying plans to invest in its long-term future were no longer viable.
Output has been winding down in the last few weeks as the final fuel loaded in the summer of 2018 was depleted.
After the shutdown, a 15-year decommissioning process will get under way, costing 3 billion Swiss francs ($3.06 billion). No plans have been agreed for how the site will be redeveloped.
Shutting down Muehleberg has generated mixed emotions.
“There is a lot of Swiss know-how in the power plant. Old valves, for example, which still come from (Swiss engineering company) Sulzer. A piece of factory and economic history is lost,” said one worker, who asked not to be named.
“It also hurts when we cut up everything that we have nurtured over the years.”
Anti-nuclear campaigners, however, hailed the move.
“Clearly, we welcome the decision to close the plant,” said Philippe de Rougement, president of the campaign group Sortir du Nucleaire. “We would have loved it to close much earlier.”
Switzerland’s use of nuclear energy had delayed its development of renewable energy sources, he said.
“Nuclear energy was a grave mistake for Switzerland. We have had the electricity, but the future generations will have to manage the toxic waste and they won’t thank us.””
Link: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-swiss-nuclearpower/switzerland-switches-off-nuclear-plant-as-it-begins-exit-from-atomic-power-idUSKBN1YO19J
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Do they celebrate the shut-down of reactors? When they launch them, there is usually a big ceremony with dignitaries cutting ribbons and a brass band playing cheerful songs, so they ought to celebrate even more when they shut them down.
In deep boreholes? No.
Nuclear waste disposal: Why the case for deep boreholes is … full of holes
By Lindsay Krall
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 26 March 2020
Article Excerpt(s):
“Many challenges to the viability of borehole disposal stem from the limit that modern drilling techniques impose on borehole diameters. Although the precise borehole geometry is dependent on location-specific geologic variables, deeper boreholes generally necessitate smaller diameters. Such a limitation has implications both in terms of the barrier system that surrounds the nuclear fuel and in terms of the ability to fully characterize the geology of the disposal site.
To accommodate canisters whose diagonal cross-section has a length of 30 centimeters, the diameter of Deep Isolation’s curving boreholes must be larger than 40 centimeters. Since this exceeds the 22-centimeter standard for oil and gas extraction, the technical feasibility of Deep Isolation’s drilling scheme remains unclear. But if it is feasible, then a 40-centimeter diameter borehole would restrict the thickness of the canister walls to about one centimeter. As compared to deep-mined repositories, which could accept canisters with walls thicker than 5 centimeters, thin-walled canisters will have adverse safety consequences for the workers who will load the waste into the boreholes. Therefore, potential worker exposures to and environmental releases of radioactivity during canister loading warrants careful consideration.
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For instance, gamma radiation emitted by spent fuel can penetrate a canister wall and expose operators to radiation. The thick-walled canisters destined for deep-mined repositories will attenuate a significant portion of this penetrating radiation, but the thin-walled canisters inherent to borehole disposal will have negligible shielding capability.
The sheer number of canisters will pose further challenges. Canister designs for mined repositories will have a capacity of at least four spent fuel assemblies, whereas borehole canisters will each contain only one assembly. Lowering hundreds of thousands of flimsy canisters into hundreds of narrow boreholes in a safe, timely fashion will be tricky, to say the least. If a canister is punctured or becomes stuck during this phase, then the risk to operators and the environment could be high.
Investing in the necessary research, design, and development needed for drilling, shielding, and canister emplacement for Deep Isolation’s concept might be justified, if this approach would improve the financial and long-term safety case for spent fuel disposal relative to a deep-mined repository. But, the thin-walled canisters will also adversely affect long-term safety as well, insofar as they will be more likely to fail through corrosion compared to a thicker canister.”
Link: https://thebulletin.org/2020/03/nuclear-waste-disposal-why-the-case-for-deep-boreholes-is-full-of-holes/
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Unfortunately, the stuff now exists. It has to be put SOMEWHERE. I don’t hear anyone saying suggesting a real answer. We can’t just wish it away.
The Dene and Uranium Mining at Great Bear Lake
They Never Told Us These Things
By Julie Salverson,
Maisonneuve Magazine, 12 August 2011
Article Excerpt(s):
“Long ago, there was a famous rock called Somba Ke—“The Money Place”—on the eastern shore of Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories. Loud noises came from this place and it was bad medicine to pass near it. In the old days, a group of caribou hunters camped at Somba Ke for a night. One of them—a man named Ehtséo Ayah, known in his community as “Grandfather”—had a dream and saw many strange things: men with white faces climbing into a big hole in the ground, a great flying bird, a big stick dropped on people far away. This would happen sometime in the future, after we are all gone, the prophet said. In his vision, everyone died. Everyone burned.
Theresa Baton recounts this tale, recorded by the elder George Blondin, as we sit in her narrow, smoky trailer. There is a framed photo of Ayah on the sideboard. Baton is a strikingly beautiful woman, as slender and fit as her husband, Peter. They are two of the few Dene grandparents left alive in Déline, an indigenous community of several hundred people in the Northwest Territories. In the waning days of World War II, the people of Déline and the white miners working at nearby Port Radium ferried bags of uranium ore from the Eldorado mine—where Somba Ke once sat—across Great Bear Lake. The ninety-pound sacks were carried on men’s backs, loaded onto boats and transported about two thousand kilometres south to Alberta. The crushed ore was refined in Port Hope, Ontario. Then it was sent to the Manhattan Project in New Mexico, where it was used to develop the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Few Canadians know about their country’s role in one of history’s most destructive acts of war.
The day before I visit the Batons, their neighbour Isadore Yukon—who transported the sacks by boat—tells me his arms would get red from the ore, and he’d grow so exhausted crossing back and forth over the lake that he’d lie down on the bags to sleep. Peter and Theresa moved to Déline a long time ago, and the uranium mine closed in the early 1960s. Theresa says that when they lived at Port Radium, the women would make tents from the sacks for their families to sleep in. There has been a lot of illness since then, and many deaths from cancer. Déline has come to be called the “Village of Widows.” The town’s surviving elders say the prophet Ayah warned them. These are people who still have no word for radiation.
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For decades, the Sahtúgot’ine—Bear Lake people—had only heard rumours about where the pitchblende, or uranium, gleaned from their land ended up. In the 1990s, a meeting between the Dene and Gordon Edwards, co-founder of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, confirmed the deadly tie binding Port Radium to Hiroshima. Then an extraordinary thing happened. A Dene delegation got on a plane and went to Japan to offer the hibakusha—the bomb survivors—an apology.
In 2001, I learn that much of the uranium used in developing the atomic bombs dropped on Japan was from Great Bear Lake. This information comes from a colleague, Peter van Wyck, who wants to know if I’ll accompany him on a research trip. How would I like to follow the path of uranium from the Northwest Territories to New Mexico? I’ve always been attracted to catastrophic events: the fault lines in the psyche of a culture; the secrets that fester in families, leak quietly into communities and eventually—sometimes—explode. I work in theatre, so I decide to tell the story of Great Bear Lake’s uranium by writing an opera.
A year later, I find myself in the Batons’ trailer. Dizzy from the cigarette smoke, I stand up to leave. Theresa grabs my hand and thanks me for coming. “You didn’t bring one of those tape recorders,” she says. “That’s good.” Later, one of the community workers tells me, “Lots of people come to interview the elders here. Not many come to talk.” As I bundle into my new snowsuit, Peter shakes his head and insists on lending me a pair of long beaver mitts. He says the weather is unusually cold at minus forty-eight, and that, if I pay attention, I can hear ice crack.
I wave goodbye and stumble into the frigid air. As I head to my hotel, I pass the cemetery with its rows of tiny white crosses. Sitting offshore in a blanket of brilliance is Isadore Yukon’s old tugboat, the Radium Gilbert—retired sometime in the 1960s and bought by the Dene Band Council for one dollar. Her graffiti-scratched hull tilts drunkenly in the snow. When they took a Geiger counter through the boat years ago, it was her shower that had the highest levels of radioactivity.
I started going to seminars about how to survive a nuclear war when I was sixteen. It was 1971, and the peace movement—the one my generation thought would save the world—was just getting going. Helen Caldicott hadn’t yet terrified us with her documentary If You Love This Planet, but I still didn’t sleep at night. While my parents sat with their Scotches watching Ed Sullivan on our black-and-white television, I went to the field behind our house on the outskirts of Toronto to see if planes flying overhead would drop something big. I lived in perpetual anticipation of sudden explosions. I wanted to be sure that when the world blew up there would be an escape route, a door with an exit sign. One Sunday afternoon in August, I clipped an announcement from the Toronto Telegram, figured out the mysteries of the subway system and found my way to a convention hall downtown. There, I looked at exhibits about how to keep food for long periods of time, and took notes on staying warm underground during a Canadian nuclear winter.
After graduating from university, I took the train west to the coast. I had job leads in Edmonton and Vancouver, so I researched each city’s escape plan. Every municipality, now as well as then, has a strategy in the event of disaster. Edmonton felt safer because there were highways out of town. Vancouver made me nervous—all those mountains hemming you in on one side, the unforgiving ocean on the other. During a beautiful summer spent on Wreck Beach, while my new friends were falling in and out of love, I read survival manuals and discovered that the most organized city in North America was Seattle. There was a clear chain of command, one person who made the decisions and put the action plan into effect: the Fire Chief. I seriously considered moving there.
When William Faulkner won the Nobel Prize in 1949, he spoke about the curse of not having a future. “There are no longer problems of the spirit,” he said. “There is only the question: when will I be blown up?” In Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial, Robert Lifton and Greg Mitchell write that, since 1945, personal losses—the death of a loved one, dislocation from home—have merged with extreme threat: “Just as, after Hiroshima, every antagonism between nations takes on the potential for destroying the entire world, so does every personal trauma potentially take on that end-of-the-world association.” Every danger we experience, personal or private, puts us psychically on the edge of disaster, worrying about the next emergency: an earthquake in Japan, a friend with cancer, a depressed parent.
For North Americans, the September 11 attacks didn’t inaugurate the visceral, urgent sense of threat to “home” and “security”; they merely ripped off the protective scab that had grown over the wounds of 1945. We still live in fear—of terrorism, of radiation contamination, of the apocalypse. The twentysomething man who owns the corner store near my house says he doesn’t think about nuclear weapons. But he knows the planet will have no edible food in ten years, so he keeps tins and seed packets in the basement. That is what humans do when we’re in danger: we hide, we conceal ourselves, we seek shelter. Like Adam, we are always running for cover. God asks Adam, “Where are you?” Goethe replies, “If I knew myself, I’d run away.”
Great Bear Lake is more than thirty thousand square kilometres of inland sea, close to the upper limit of the tree line. It’s bordered on its south and west sides by black and white spruce, with a sprinkling of muskeg; on its north, the forest gives way to tundra. During the 1930s, a whole village sprung up around the site of the Eldorado mine on the lake’s eastern shore. There was a school, a store and lodging for the white miners. Once, the circus even came to town.
I stay at Grey Goose Lodge, the only hotel in Déline. A dozen rooms, a restaurant, a gift shop and a porch. It’s February. With so little daylight, time is organized differently here, and there is unrelenting activity. Large vehicles idle outside, exhaust clouding the brittle air. If you turn the motors off, they’ll freeze up and you won’t get them going again.
In my hotel room, I run a bath and sit with my feet in hot water, thinking about what I’ve learned in Déline so far. “We did not know the ore was bad,” one person said. “Non-natives didn’t know, either.” The Dene started to ask questions in the 1980s when their men began to die. The Medical Officer of Health for the Northwest Territories only began a register of diagnoses and deaths in 1989–90; the year before, it listed fourteen Dene men who worked in the mining, milling or transport of radium and uranium. All of them died from cancers associated with exposure to radioactive contaminants: lung, bone, throat.
Deborah Simmons, a staff person for the Déline Uranium Team, comes to the hotel and drops off They Never Told Us These Things, a report the Dene researched, wrote and carried to Ottawa in 1998. The 160 pages are carefully detailed and plainspoken. I read that, from the beginning of the mine’s operations, the government had kept crucial information from the Dene. In 1932, the Annual Report of the Department of Mines mandated weekly lung tests for miners, as well as monthly blood tests for lab workers—but only in Canada’s south. The 1933 report included a lengthy and detailed examination of the ore’s dangers: “when the insidious and deadly nature of radium is considered, too much care cannot be taken.” But nobody told the Dene who carried and transported it. Nor, it seems, did anyone tell the white miners who worked underground, and who also lived at Port Radium.
Cindy Kenny Gilday, a Dene activist and a major force behind the trip to Hiroshima, writes about a packed community meeting in Déline, where lawyers delivered a year’s worth of uranium-impact research from the archives in Ottawa. “‘In the mountain of papers we dug up in Ottawa this year on this issue, there is not one mention of the Dene, your people,’” the lawyers say in Gilday’s retelling. “The hall went completely silent. The elders had incredulous looks on their faces, a combination of sadness and anger.”
The DUT has spent years researching the effects of the mine on the community. In 1998, it sent a delegation to Ottawa. A year later, it agreed to a co-operative process with the federal government to research the health and environmental impacts of the mine. The result—called the Canada-Déline Uranium Table Final Report, released in 2005—made twenty-six recommendations. Some have been addressed, and cleanup work in partnership with the Dene is ongoing. But the report also concluded that there was not enough evidence to link working for Eldorado to cancers in the area. Although significant contamination was found in the lake and on the mine site, none, according to the report, would harm the fish or wildlife the people depend on.
The CDUT report has faced criticism both inside and outside Déline. Well-known environmental journalist Andrew Nikiforuk expressed concern that the study’s narrow framing weakened its findings. Intertek, the official fact-finder hired for the CDUT report, was not able to access key archival information. The only statistics considered relevant in the determination of cancer-related deaths were body counts. But in David Henningson’s 2006 documentary, Somba Ke: The Money Place, cancer research scientist Rosalie Bertell argues that using death records to assess the effects of uranium on a population is insufficient. “Bertell maintains that the only way to do this kind of investigation (she apparently offered this to the community) is to do blood and urine analyses,” Peter van Wyck writes in his book Highway of the Atom, “which would at least allow for correlation with exposure.”
Eldorado was reopened as a silver mine in 1963, then closed again in 1982. Today, almost ten years after my visit to Déline, Alberta Star Development Corporation has extensively staked and test-drilled the area. The company’s website describes large uranium anomalies that have never been explored, and Alberta Star is trying to determine “if there is a potential resource to support the recommencement of commercial production at the mine sites.” Alberta Star’s permit, granted with permission from the Déline Land Corporation, officially expires in 2013, but if it continues to meet regulatory requirements, its mineral claim will remain in effect indefinitely. Uranium mining doesn’t just provoke controversy—it also provides jobs.
Known for their pioneering self-governance, the Sahtúgot’ine have undertaken a series of initiatives in land stewardship, including cleanup work at the various abandoned mine sites on the lake, as recommended by the CDUT report. Still, many questions remain. They Never Told Us These Things asks how Ottawa could have knowingly let the Bear Lake people select contaminated areas for settlement during their land-claims process in the early nineties. The Sahtúgot’ine say their families have lost faith in governments and their young people see no future; they believe that their place in the world is poisoned and their children will die.
The Dene report also mentions the Japanese: “We are suffering intense guilt and grief in our community that the materials we carried to the barges and to the aircraft went to make an atomic bomb that killed many tens of thousands of human beings in Japan. Our people feel that if they had been told what they were helping to do, they would not have done it.”
Shortly before I leave Déline there is a feast. I sit beside long sheets of brown paper rolled out on the community hall floor, and eat caribou and potatoes. The meat is too gamey for me; it makes me gag and I’m ashamed. I look around at the people I have met and wonder how I’ll do justice to any of this with the opera I plan to write. (It would eventually become Shelter, composed by Juliet Palmer and produced by Tapestry New Opera in Toronto.) I have tried to get a sense of this place but have deliberately not asked questions that might stir up painful memories. After dinner, two more people invite me to visit their homes the next day—my last in Déline—and have tea. Suddenly, a week seems painfully inadequate.
Following the meal, we move to rows of chairs and have a discussion about Eldorado, and what it means to unearth this history. A woman stands up, leans for a moment on her husband’s shoulder, straightens and says, “Let’s get on. It’s about the future. Enough with the past.” Another man beside her seems angry. He gets up, speaks to the group: “If you’ve got something to say, pull it out of your pocket. Otherwise, it will rot.”
When I fly out of Déline, I have a stopover in Norman Wells, the Northwest Territories. In the town’s small museum, there’s a display of photos and artifacts from the Eldorado mine, and I find a photograph of a bottle fastened to a plywood frame. I lean over the railing to look more closely. The bottle is attached to a commemorative plaque placed outside the miners’ changing room at Port Radium. Inside the bottle is trinitite, the olive-coloured, glass-like substance made when the sand hit by the first atomic explosion melted and solidified. The trinitite traveled all the way from the New Mexico desert to the mine at Port Radium. I decide to make the same trip in reverse.
At the National Atomic Museum in Albuquerque, there are sterling silver earrings for sale in the shapes of Little Boy and Fat Man, the two bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When they were first sold in the museum’s boutique, Japanese tourists complained and the earrings were removed. But when I visit in 2004 they are back, displayed on the shelf with other assorted souvenirs. I buy a pair, thinking nobody will believe me otherwise, then drive down an open highway to southern New Mexico, arriving after sunset at a cheap motel. I lie awake thinking about the next day, about putting on a miner’s cap and taking an elevator a mile underground. I think about cancer and gamma rays and wish I were writing an opera about eating and drinking across Italy.
I hit the road again as the sun comes up and suddenly, in the middle of scrub desert, there is the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, advertised as “the world’s first underground repository licensed to safely and permanently dispose of transuranic radioactive waste.” This includes all kinds of things, like lab coats and instruments, that have been exposed to enough uranium to have a half-life longer than twenty years—they will be radioactive for a very long time. The WIPP is surrounded by kilometres of fence and wire. I check in at the gate, park the car and meet an engineer, a public relations guy and a young indigenous man with a briefcase and a crooked smile. They sit me down in a boardroom and give me a two-hour briefing: what to know before going down the elevator shaft.
Things don’t go wrong at the WIPP. If they do, there are controls. For example, when you get “occupational exposure,” you’ll hear one of three levels of alarms (“Bell, Yelp or Gong”), at which point you move to the colour-coded staging area. You have to be over eighteen to visit. You sink more than six hundred metres, travelling fast in a tiny elevator, passing through forty-two square kilometres of fossilized coral reef; millions of years ago, this area was covered by ocean. Each drum of waste is wrapped in layers of lead and dropped slowly into one hundred million cubic metres of salt, one of nature’s most stable compounds.
Radioactive waste comes here by truck from seven sites across the United States—a huge, choreographed dance number. To get a truck into the WIPP, you need to jump through a series of bureaucratic hoops; the engineer says, “We’re held hostage by politics.” I think of the elderly World War II veterans I watched the day before, guiding bored high-school students through the Atomic Museum. They delivered a sanitized account of why the bomb was dropped, with no mention of the politics around Truman’s decision: the opening gambits of the Cold War; the pressure to show America’s new weapon to the Russians and to create a test case the government could study.
The elevator plummets through the earth. We step out into a long tunnel bustling with workers, their hard hats eager spotlights in the dull blackness. I tentatively put my hand against cold wet walls of salt, and the engineer continues his story with enthusiasm. There are three or four trucks on the road at a time, travelling with their precious cargo. Two guys are on board each truck, and they stop every 150 miles for a complete two-hour inspection. The drivers need thirty-five thousand miles of driving experience, can have no violations, are all in their forties or fifties—they know what they’re doing. There have only been two “road events,” one involving a nineteen-year-old and a six-pack of Corona. The kid’s Toyota hit the back of the truck and flipped it at some rural intersection in a not-to-be-mentioned state. Apparently there was no damage, and they tell me the beer was okay.
I also have an invitation to visit the Trinity site in the White Sands Missile Range, where the first atomic bomb was exploded on July 16, 1945. I stop for a coffee, delaying, afraid of this part of my journey. It seems crazy to have spent my youth trying to escape a nuclear blast and to now, voluntarily, drive to Ground Zero. But it also feels like something is coming full circle in my life, even if I don’t know what it is.
I head west across sixty-four kilometres of the Tularosa Basin. White Sands, located in south-central New Mexico, helps the US military with “experimentation, test, research, assessment, development and training in support of the Nation at war.” On my way to the Trinity site, I step out onto the tarmac of a tiny missile museum. Holding my hair back with both hands as the February wind slams into me, I stare at what must be thirty military rockets, tall white cones crowded onto an acre of land, a flock of odd birds stranded in this empty way station.
White Sands is an endless expanse of desert and cactus, and most of what goes on here is secret. There is a great deal of terrorism research, and somewhere out of sight is a scale model of the building targeted in the Oklahoma City bombing. I’m taken through a guarded gate and driven into the desert until we reach a small circular area surrounded by a high wire fence. I walk inside. In the centre is a three-and-a-half-metre stone monument marking the spot where the bomb exploded. Every metre or so along the fence, tied crudely to the wire, are black-and-white photographs: the blast, the farmhouse where the scientists stayed, an atomic equation. As we enter, someone tells me not to worry; one hour of radiation here is about the same as skiing on a mountain in sunlight. I look at my watch.
My father is almost ninety. His most vivid memory of the atomic bomb, he tells me, is of my mother coming into their kitchen with a magazine in her hands. “I was cooking, a pot was simmering, I was stirring. She stood in the doorway, shaking, in a yellow sundress. Life magazine photos, I think. Thin-skinned, your mother.” He smiles and reaches a bony, spotted arm to pat me on the knee. “She was missing the tough layer, the one that keeps you safe. A strong woman on the outside. Inside, fragile. Things could break.”
August 6, 1945 was a Monday. The Enola Gay left Tinian Island’s North Field at 2:45 am. There were little explosions along the runway from the flashes of photographers, who were alerted that something big was breaking. Special Bombing Mission Number 13 took off without a hitch, with Little Boy in its bomb bay. The target was the T-shaped Aoio Bridge, in the centre of Hiroshima.
The Enola Gay dropped its bundle at 8:15 am. At 2:58 pm, the plane landed back on Tinian. The pilot was decorated with the Distinguished Service Cross, while the other members of his crew received Air Medals. On August 9, 1945, the Enola Gay flew reconnaissance to Kokura as a support plane for Special Bombing Mission Number 16, which dropped Fat Man on the city of Nagasaki.
Physicist John Manley suggested the blast of the Trinity atomic bomb—the first ever—looked like a black rose, its petals unfurling as it grew skyward. In October of 1945, a crowd gathered in the Los Angeles Coliseum to witness a recreation of the bombing of Japan. A mushroom cloud burst from the field to the enraptured cheers of the crowd.
Many of the atomic-bomb scientists were deeply conflicted about their discovery. After a party celebrating the first test, J. Robert Oppenheimer saw a colleague throwing up and thought, “It’s started.” Three months later, the “father of the bomb” retired as director of Los Alamos, and each worker was given a silver pin stamped with a large “A” and a small “bomb.” “I never saw a man in such an extremely nervous state as Oppenheimer,” US Vice-President Henry Wallace wrote in his diary. “The guilt consciousness of the atomic bomb scientists is one of the most astounding things I have ever seen.”
Fifty-three years after Fat Man and Little Boy, the delegation of Sahtúgot’ine travelled from Déline to Japan, to apologize to atomic bomb survivors and their relatives. The filmmaker Peter Blow was with them, shooting his documentary Village of Widows. When I watch the film for the first time in my living room in Toronto, it is an old Dene man’s testimony about the ore that stops me. “I thought it was gold,” he says. “I thought they made rings, or something, in the south.”
On my last night in Déline, I go ice fishing. A man named Gordon Taniton, his round face framing a flashing smile, has been teasing me that I don’t have “northern patience.” He picks me up from the steps of the small community centre. I climb onto his red snowmobile and we follow the shoreline of Great Bear, past tiny houses puffing smoke as the sun bleeds fire along an indigo horizon. We lurch onto the lake and head full steam toward a small white canvas tent about a kilometre out. As we pull up, Gordon switches off the engine and the silence roars back like a giant wave hitting an empty beach.
He takes me inside and proudly shows me a battered couch, an acrylic rose rug and an airtight stove. He loads it up with wood, tosses in a match and points at a dark circle cut out of the floor. “The fish down there aren’t just food. They give us Sahtú people our freedom. Maybe one will find you.” He hands me a cold black rod. “Don’t let the fire go out—you’ll freeze! Sit yourself on that couch, prop your feet to hold you steady and drop your line down. Then wait.”
I listen as the snowmobile disappears into the night. After a half-hour or so, my northern patience wears out and I pull out my copy of They Never Told Us These Things. The bundle of papers falls open to a photocopied page I hadn’t noticed before.
It’s a map, drawn in pencil, of the mine on Great Bear Lake. The names of its authors are written in the upper right-hand corner: Huey Ferdinand, Irene Betsidea, Mary Kodakin, Paul Baton. Along the top, a jagged line indicates a row of cliffs, the pencil tracing how the land curves into inlets. There are small squares indicating locations of interest: the tugboat that carried the ore, places contaminated by oil, a winter airstrip, a tennis court (beside chemical bags), houses for miners (beside sewage dumped in the water), a bank, store, skating rink, school. In a small circle is written, “deep pond on top of hill.” Outside the circle: “child drowns, pond drained.”
The map—situated as it is inside a report sent to Ottawa, a book on a shelf, an archive—shows what French theorist Pierre Nora calls “les lieux de mémoire.” These are sites where an intersection of history, memory and engagement “blocks the work of forgetting” and “carries a will to remember”; they are transitive moments in the culture of a living people.
Running diagonally across the map are two long, narrow strips, with a row of tiny arrows inside each. These are the underground tunnels that lead from the mine, more than 240 metres below the surface, to “way far” under the lake. Water has continuously penetrated the three-metre-wide tunnels. The Dene are concerned that, decades after the mine was abandoned, water that has absorbed radioactive minerals has filled the tunnels and is now seeping back into the lake.
Great Bear is a beautiful spot to sit and fish. I think of the 740,000 tons of radioactive tailings left in the lake beneath me. Thorium-230, a hazardous nuclide found in uranium tailings, has a half-life of about eighty thousand years.”
https://maisonneuve.org/article/2011/08/12/they-never-told-us-these-things/
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What a terrible name for a town: “The village of widows!” The only videos about Deline that you see on Youtube show people fishing. I guess people go there to fish but never learn about the radioactivity.
The Dene Apologized for Hiroshima
Yes, Canada contributed to the development of nuclear weapons. And there were harsh effects of the uranium mining on the Dene (First Nations) people of Northwest Territories.
Canada’s Uranium Highway: Victims and Perpetrators
By Sean Howard
Cape Breton Spectator, 7 August 2019
Article Excerpt(s):
“On numerous occasions in recent decades, Canadian governments have apologized for a host of egregious wrongdoings.
While such words of contrition are too often unaccompanied by adequate actions, they can help make visible, as Trudeau argued in his 2017 apology, the “hard truths” Canadian society needs to confront.
Yet the most extraordinary apology in Canadian history was surely that offered by the victims of systematic mistreatment by the Canadian government to the victims of a crime against humanity they unknowingly helped others commit. For on 6 August 1998, 10 members of the small Sahtúgot’ine Dene community of Déline (Fort Franklin) in the ‘Northwest Territories’ apologized in Hiroshima for the atomic destruction of that city – and the death of over 200,000 civilians – exactly 53 years earlier by a bomb made in part from uranium from their land.
The Dene didn’t even mine the stuff, a role reserved for the all-white below-ground workforce of Eldorado Gold Mines Ltd., placed under state control during World War Two. They were allowed only to help it on its long and winding way, 3,000 miles by river, lake, road and air, from Port Radium on Great Bear Lake to Port Hope on Lake Ontario, where, from 1942-45, the suddenly precious ore – the ‘new gold’ of the atomic age – was, together with ‘Belgian’ uranium from the Congo, refined and dispatched to Los Alamos, the desert lab in New Mexico secretly building the new, city-smashing Superweapon.
There, as Concordia professor Peter van Wyck chronicles in his 2010 study The Highway of the Atom, it “made its transformed debut at Alamogordo,” site of the Trinity test of 16 July 1945 (‘The Day the Sun Rose Twice’, an “entrance reprised shortly afterward, over the clear morning skies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
The existence of this epic road to hell was unsuspected by the Dene until long after Eldorado stopped mining for radium and uranium in 1960. Beginning in the 1970s, and spiking sharply in the 1980s, many of the men who had handled and carried the ore – and the men who had mined it – began to die from cancer, raising obvious questions about health and safety which soon led in shocking directions.
[read more]
In the 1990s, Gordon Edwards, co-founder of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR), told a group of Déline Dene there was compelling evidence that the ore that had made so many of them sick had been used to kill vast numbers of innocent people. By the end of decade, Déline was better known as The Village of Widows, the title of a film by Peter Blow, documenting not only the toll on the community but its extraordinary Hiroshima pilgrimage.
The Village of Widows was broadcast on the Canadian Vision channel in 1998; the following June, without mentioning the film, CBC News announced it “has learned about a dark chapter in Canadian history,” a scandal surrounding “the raw materials used to make the atomic bombs that fell on Japan.”
The “Dene,” the CBC ‘revealed,’ “were never told of the health hazards they faced, even though the government knew … as early as 1932 that precautions should be taken in handling radioactive materials”. Instead of which, for example:
“Paul Baton, now aged 83, used to lift sacks of uranium ore onto boats. He said workers dressed in casual clothes and uranium dust ” — gold dust yellow — “covered the men like flour.”
‘Paul’ Baton was actually Peter Baton, interviewed by scholar and playwright Julie Salverson for her Lines of Flight, an Atomic Memoir published in 2016. Peter’s wife, Theresa, told her:
…that when they lived in Port Radium, the women would make tents for their families to sleep in from the sacks that carried the uranium.
The image harrowingly evokes the poverty of the workers, as detailed in a December 1998 article, ‘Déline Dene Mining Tragedy,’ in First Nations Drum:
During the beginning of the war efforts, the mine was kept running at a very high pace, utilizing non-Native miners brought in from all over the country. The Dene were employed as ‘coolies’ packing 45-kilogram sacks of radioactive ore for three dollars a day, working 12 hours a day, six days a week.
This at a time when the ore was worth over $70,000 a gram.
Cindy Kenney-Gilday, a member of the delegation to Hiroshima and Chair of the Déline Dene Band Uranium Committee, told First Nations Drum journalist Ronald B. Barbour that the toll taken on “my own home” is “the most vicious example of cultural genocide I have ever seen.”
“Kenney-Gilday,” Barbour wrote, “who has suffered the loss of her father to colon cancer and brother to stomach cancer, stressed that” because “it is the grandfathers in Dene society” who traditionally transmit teachings and worldways to younger men and boys, “the loss of these men in the community” has left “too many men” without guides.
The guide to all Dene, of course, is the land itself, and the legacy of the Eldorado era has been to create “a radioactive heartland.” Wrote Barbour:
Over 1.7 million tons of radioactive waste and tailings was callously dumped into and around the lake, drastically contaminating food sources.
Kenney-Gilday, though, was keen to stress the link between the local and global tragedies involved. In Hiroshima, she told Barbour:
One of the widows expressed deep sorrow that the material that came out of our land had killed innocent victims in a land that’s foreign to us.
In 1998, the Déline Dene Band Uranium Committee released a 160-page, 14-recommendation report, “They Never Told Us These Things.”
In a 2011 article in Maisonneuve, Salverson recounts a community meeting in Déline to discuss the report, “where [non-Dene] lawyers delivered a year’s worth of uranium-impact research from the archives in Ottawa,” revealing that in “the mountain of papers we dug up … there is not one mention of the Dene, your people.”
“The hall,” Kenney-Gilday remembers, “went completely silent. The elders had incredulous looks on their faces, a combination of sadness and anger.”
Nor were they once mentioned in Eldorado: Canada’s National Uranium Company, the official company history commissioned from University of Toronto historian Robert Bothwell in the early 1980s as controversy grew over the criminal negligence of Eldorado as both as a private and Crown corporation.
Van Wyck quotes a 1986 review, noting that:
[A] company history is often a sign of trouble. It frequently signifies the passing of a generation of managers, the need to clean up the company image after a corporate catastrophe, or the loss of institutional memory. Increasingly, corporate histories are now being written as part of a long-range planning process. This book by Robert Bothwell is an example of all of the above.
The pernicious result, as van Wyck laments, is that despite its abject failure to “consider issues of health and safety or Aboriginal involvement,” or to draw “comprehensively” on company archives now under lock-and-key in Ottawa, Bothwell’s account – “the work of a single author under a contractual arrangement with a corporate body” – has “come to constitute the field of historical facts for all questions pertaining to Eldorado.”
In 1999, the Ministry of Indian Affairs and Northern Development appointed a Canada-Déline Uranium Table (CDUT) to investigate ‘health and environmental issues relating to the Port Radium mine.’ In 2005, its final report, while acknowledging “the perceptual link between exposure to mining activities and illness and death,” found no evidence of abnormal cancer rates in the area; it also concluded that the numerous environmental “impacts” and examples of contamination it considered were “not a cause of concern from an ecological perspective.”
The findings, Salverson writes, drew fierce criticism from “both inside and outside Déline”: “Well-known environmental journalist Andrew Nikiforuk,” who had been studying the issue for years, “expressed concern that the study’s narrow framing weakened its findings,” while “Intertek, the official fact-finder hired for the CDUT report, was not able to access key archival information” – the very information, perhaps, that had so disinterested Bothwell.
Most controversially, the “only statistics considered relevant in the determination of cancer were body counts,” with other easily-obtainable, highly-pertinent evidence (e.g. blood and urine samples) excluded, despite the report’s own admission that “cancer statistics should be interpreted cautiously because of gaps in the NWT cancer registry prior to 1990 and the small populations in both Déline and the NWT.”
As van Wyck notes, in a 2006 documentary on Déline – David Hennington’s Somba Ke: The Money Place – scientist and anti-nuclear campaigner Dr. Rosalie Bertell argued that relying “on death records alone” effectively killed off the study: “Yet again,” he writes, “the testimony of their dead has proven insufficient. Once again, the living are passed over in silence.”
In a 2008 CBC radio documentary, Bothwell claimed that uranium from the Eldorado mine was not used in the bombs dropped on Japan, basing his conclusion – that only the higher-quality ore from the Congo was needed – on documents seen in the course of his 1980s research. Although such documents might be among those the Déline Dene are barred from viewing, it seems odd that Canadian government agencies should either not know or would deliberately exaggerate the extent of the country’s wartime role. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), for example, provides the public with a presumably well-informed summary of ‘Canada’s Historical Role in Developing Nuclear Weapons’:
The extraction and processing or uranium as well as research into the production of nuclear materials for military purposes are part of Canada’s history. The better-known chapter of that history is probably Canada’s participation in the Manhattan Project … when our country supplied and refined uranium for use in US facilities.
On 6 August 1945, C.D. Howe, Canada’s Minister of Munitions and Supply and Reconstruction, issued a statement – or what van Wyck called “a terrifying sociopathic analysis” – arguing “the real significance” of Hiroshima was not that “this new bomb has accomplished an almost incredible feat of destruction, important as that fact may be,” but that “the bomb is a sign in which we can all appreciate that the basic problems of the release of energy by atomic fission have been solved.”
A week later, responding to “widespread interest in the work carried on in Canada,” Howe’s ministry provided more details of ‘Canada’s Role in Atomic Bomb Drama,’ including naming the 89 Canadian scientists (eight of them women) employed at a hitherto-secret atomic research laboratory in Montreal. Howe himself – who offered the Americans “Alberta’s wide-open spaces as a test site for the new weapon” – stressed that:
…having ample supplies of basic materials, good water supplies, and isolated sites well suited to the work, Canada … has been able to enter as a pioneer into an important new field …
Yet how well-known is this history today? In Lines of Flight, Salverson recounts her first contact with such facts, a phone call from her friend Peter van Wyck: “Did you know,” he asked, “that the uranium used to develop the atomic bombs dropped on Japan came from a uranium mine in northern Canada?” “No, she admits, “I didn’t. Nor did most people, I would later learn. Somehow this was left out of our public school curriculum.”
Van Wyck himself only learned from watching Village of Widows: for both, Canada’s contributions to the greatest ‘drama’ of modern history were Things They Were Not Told. (The extent of this ‘erasure’ will presumably have varied widely in time and place over the atomic age, and I welcome any feedback from Spectator readers on their own experiences as teachers or students.)
In 2015, van Wyck wrote of the Dene apology : “how is it that one comes to assume responsibility for that over which one has no control. How? How in the midst of recognizing their own disaster, did they attend to the Japanese survivors? Struggle though I have, I cannot answer this question.”
One factor, I suspect, is the fact the Dene were warned by the 19th century prophet and medicine man Ehtseo (Louis Ayah), that the Somba Ke rock – future site of the Eldorado mine – would become the source of great evil. As told in George Blondin’s 1990 collection, When the World was New: Stories of the Sahtú Dene, Ehtseo recounted a vision of “people going into a big hole in the ground – strange people, not Dene. Their skin was white…and they were going into a hole with all kinds of metal tools and machines.” Then “I saw”:
..big boats with smoke coming out of them, going back and forth on the river. And I saw a flying bird – a big one. They were loading it with things… I watched them and finally saw what they were making – it was something long, like a stick. … I saw what harm it would do when the big bird dropped this thing on people – they all died from this long stick, which burned everyone. The people they dropped this long thing on looked like us, like Dene. … But it isn’t for now; it’s a long time in the future.
And ‘for now,’ in They Never Told Us These Things, we have the acknowledgment of the Déline Dene not only that “we are suffering intense grief…that the materials we carried to the barges and to the aircraft went to make an atomic bomb that killed many tens of thousands of human beings in Japan,” but that “our people feel that if they been told what they were helping to do, they would not have done it”, surely suggesting the apology was intended in part to convey – perhaps to themselves, and future generations, as well as others – that given the chance they would have shown sufficient humanity, to resist such inhumanity. That they would today be able to say, as Chief Poundmaker proudly declared in 1885: “I did everything to stop bloodshed. If I had not, there would have been plenty of blood spilled…”
The hard truth is that no apology can ‘unspill’ blood, no confession undo a crime. But does that mean the Prime Minister should not say sorry, in Déline and in Hiroshima?”
Link: https://capebretonspectator.com/2019/08/07/canadas-uranium-dene-bomb/
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How many Canadians know that their country supplied the uranium for the bomb on Hiroshima? I bet not many! The first thing to do is to start publicizing it every year on the anniversary of the August 6th bombing.
The Nuclear Workforce during the Pandemic
Covid-19 Could Cause Staff Shortages in the Nuclear Power Industry
By Charles Digges
Bellona (Nuclear Issues), 20 March 2020
Article Excerpt(s):
“As the Covid-19 virus grinds world economies to a halt, several national nuclear operators are weighing how to keep sensitive and vulnerable infrastructure chugging along in the face of staff shortages due to the illness.
A number of national contingency plans, if enacted, could mark an unprecedented step by nuclear power providers to keep their highly-skilled workers healthy as governments scramble to minimize the impact of the global pandemic that has infected more than 240,000 people worldwide.
Officials in the United States, for instance, have suggested they might isolate critical technicians at the country’s nuclear power plants and ask them to live onsite to avoid exposure to the virus. Many operators say they have been stockpiling beds, blankets and food to support staff for that purpose.
Should that fail to stem the pandemic’s effect on the nuclear work force, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it would shut down any of America’s 60 nuclear plants if they can’t be appropriately staffed.
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Other operators, however, are already seeing the spread of the infection slow things down. In Great Britain, authorities announced they are shutting down a nuclear fuel reprocessing site at Sellafield after 8 percent of its 11,500-strong staff were forced to self-isolate to avoid infection. The move came after an employee tested positive for the coronavirus last week, and will lead to a gradual shutdown of the site’s Magnox facility, which is slated to close permanently later this year.
Sellafield told employees that it would work to “make best use of available people”.
France, the world’s most nuclear dependent nation, announced staff reductions at its Flameville plant in the country’s north. The EDF, France’s national nuclear operator, said that, due to high regional infection rates, it was reducing the staff at the plant from 800 to 100. As early as March 10, EDF reported that three workers at nuclear power plants had tested positive for the virus.
A spokesman for the Flameville plant told Reuters that “we have decided to only keep those in charge of safety and security” working while the coronavirus crisis runs its course.
French grid operator RTE expects nuclear availability to stay 3.6GW below the 2015 to 2019 average and likewise predicts a national drop in nuclear demand.
Taken together, the emergency responses of national nuclear operators are symptoms of a big problem that Covid-19 posed to the nuclear sector, Mycle Schneider and independent energy and nuclear policy analyst told Power Technology Magazine.
“Covid-19 constitutes an unprecedented threat on sensitive strategic infrastructure, above all the power sector,” he said.
“The French case sheds light on a fundamental societal safety and security issue that got little attention in the current Covid-19 crisis. Operation and maintenance of nuclear power plants draw on a small group of highly specialized technicians and engineers.”
Because of that very level of specialization, some in the US nuclear industry are considering simply isolating nuclear plant technicians onsite in a sort of preventative quarantine.
Maria Korsnick, head of the Washington-based Nuclear Energy Institute told the New York Times that plants are “considering measures to isolate a core group to run the plant, stockpiling ready-to-eat meals and disposable tableware, laundry supplies and personal care items.”
The US Department of Homeland Security is responsible for working with nuclear power plant operators to maintain their operations during a national emergency. On Thursday, the department issued guidelines that echoed the ones suggested by Korsnick.
“When continuous remote work is not possible, businesses should enlist strategies to reduce the likelihood of spreading the disease,” the DHS said in a memo, according to Power Magazine. “This includes, but is not necessarily limited to, separating staff by off-setting shift hours or days and/or social distancing.”
Roy Palk, president and CEO of New Horizons Consulting, which advises energy companies in the US, told the magazine that, “There are a lot of unanswered questions because this is not a model everyone is used to working with.”
To keep the lights on, he said, utilities and power plant operators might have to consider keeping staff onsite for the long term.
“These operators have a license to operate, they’re highly skilled, highly trained. They have to be certified.” he told the magazine. “These individuals need to be on the job, they need to be healthy. They have a big obligation to the public.”
Reuters contacted a dozen other power providers, all of whom said they were implementing plans to moderate risks to their employees and to ensure continuity of service, but who declined to comment on whether sequestering staff was a possibility.
In New York, Consolidated Edison Inc, which provides power to around 3.3 million customers and gas to about 1.1 million customers in New York City and Westchester County – both of which are under virus lockdowns – said it was taking steps to keep critical employees healthy, including separating some control center personnel to other locations where they can perform their work.
Duke Energy Corp, which provides power to 7.7 million customers in six states and gas to 1.6 million customers in five states, said it instituted additional worker screening measures, such as temperature checks, at generating and other critical facilities.
Puget Sound Energy, which serves more than 1.5 million customers in the Seattle, Washington area – a region hard hit by coronavirus – said all non-essential workers are working remotely, and the utility has limited access to facilities that provide critical operations.”
Link: https://bellona.org/news/nuclear-issues/2020-03-covid-19-could-cause-staff-shortages-in-the-nuclear-power-industry
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American Nuclear Waste
Fred Pearce – the author of “Fallout: Disasters, Lies, and the Legacy of the Nuclear Age” (2018) published the following article in The Atlantic in May 2018. The article discusses the legacy of decades of nuclear waste from nuclear power plants across the United States.
The 60-Year Downfall of Nuclear Power in the U.S. Has Left a Huge Mess
By Fred Pearce
The Atlantic, 28 May 2018
Link: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/05/the-60-year-downfall-of-nuclear-power-in-the-us-has-left-a-huge-mess/560945/
The CBC Recounts the Dene Plight
CBC’s Canada: A People’s History reveals Canada’s connection to the production of the atomic bombs used on Hiroshima (Japan) and Nagasaki (Japan) via uranium mining.
Mining for a Bomb
By CBC – Canada: A People’s History, 2001
Article Excerpt(s):
“Canada supplies uranium for the development of the U.S. atomic bomb, while native-Canadian miners work in clouds of radioactive dusk
One of Canadas biggest contributions to the war effort remained shrouded in secrecy in early 1940s. And the secret would devastate the northern Canadian natives who were hired to mine a deadly metal called uranium.
In 1942, a group of scientists led by physicist Enrico Fermi used a pile of uranium and graphite in an abandoned squash court at the University of Chicago to demonstrate the first controlled nuclear chain reaction.
The experiment launched the Manhattan Project, the race to build an atomic bomb during the Second World War. Fundamental to the American military’s work was a ready supply of uranium, a deadly radioactive element crucial to the construction of nuclear weapons. The Americans contacted their Canadian allies to fulfill the needs.
Years earlier, Gerald Labine had found uranium on the remote shores of Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories. Hed closed the mine at the outbreak of war but in 1942 received a phone call from C.D. Howe, the Minister of Munitions and Supply and the mastermind behind Canadas economic war transformation.
“I want you to reopen,” Howe told Labine. “Get together the most trustworthy people you can find. The Canadian Government will give you whatever money is required… And for God’s sake don’t even tell your wife what you’re doing.”
The ore was mined by the Dene, a semi-nomadic people who followed the migratory caribou herds. The miners were paid three dollars a day to haul forty-five kilogram sacks of ore out to barges on the Mackenzie River for the long trip to the United States. The Dene called the grey stone the “money rock.”
By the end of 1943, the mine was operating at full capacity, producing the 60 tonnes of uranium oxide requested by the Americans. Paul Baton worked for three months in clouds of the radioactive dust.
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“I was coated like flour in radium dust as it leaked from the heavy bags on my back. It gets into your clothes, hair, mouth and hands. During the long barge trips across the lake and down the Bear and Mackenzie we would sleep and sit on the sacks.”
In Ottawa, mining officials were warned that exposure to radium dust was harmful. (Radium is a radioactive metal found in uranium.) The information was kept secret.
Local children also played with the ore and waste from the mine was dumped into Great Bear Lake. Dene women used the discarded sacks as shelters.
“Our canvas tents were all worn out and could not keep the rain out very well. Because the men worked as labourers for the mine, they kept ripped ore bags and brought these back for us to use. I made three tents from these bags. ”
After the war, the Dene town on the shores of Great Bear Lake would become known as the village of widows, because so many of the men die of cancer.
At Los Alamos, New Mexico, the uranium was used to develop the first atomic bomb in a feverish race that brought together dozens of scientists. Howe offered Albertas wide-open spaces as a test site for the new weapon but the Americans preferred the New Mexico desert.
The atomic bomb was successfully tested on July 16, 1945 at Alamogordo, New Mexico. Then on August 6, the American bomber Enola Gay, flew over Japan and dropped the atomic bomb code-named Fat Man on Hiroshima, a city of 343,000. Sixty per cent of the city was razed by the blast, and 100,000 people died immediately, with tens of thousands dying of radiation poisoning within several months.”
Link: https://www.cbc.ca/history/EPISCONTENTSE1EP14CH2PA3LE.html
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Radioactive Geysers?
There’s a risk of radioactive-contaminated geysers forming in areas with buried nuclear waste products – especially if subterranean storage silos flood. This is due to the radioactive-materials heating the groundwater and is coined the Yellowstone Effect.
“According to the report, if the superheated silos are flooded, they could potentially erupt with deadly radioactive steam geysers. The phenomenon has been dubbed “The Yellowstone Effect,” because the geysers are likely to mimic the action of the famous “Old Faithful” geyser at Yellowstone National Park. According to Edison’s own documents, the beachfront nuclear waste storage facility is subject to flooding and bluff collapse.
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The exterior temperature of the thin-walled canisters average 452°F, while the surface of the silos that hold them are at least 350°F, well above the boiling point of water (212°F). In the event of flooding, cold ocean water will flash to steam once it enters the superheated silos, ejecting a deadly blast of radioactive steam from the outlet vents at the top of the below-ground silos.
According to Paul Blanch, a Public Watchdogs’ subject matter expert, “If the site is flooded, the integrity of the 5/8” thick stainless steel canisters may be compromised by pressure and thermal shock. We expect the phenomenon to occur whenever water floods the silos.”
Link: https://publicwatchdogs.org/flooding-likely-to-create-radioactive-geysers-at-songs/
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If your nuclear delivery truck is stuck in a traffic jam…
Here’s the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) discussing the risks of transporting nuclear and/or radioactive materials.
A Moving Target: Nuclear Security During Transport
By Inna Pletukhina
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) News, 24 January 2020
The article identifies that even minor variables – such as a small traffic collision – can have significant impacts. The article additionally acknowledges the challenges of unpredictable variables in the modelling of transportation safety protocols.
Article Excerpt(s):
“Nuclear and other radioactive material is hardest to protect when it is transported from point A to point B — more than half of the incidents of theft of radioactive material reported to the IAEA between 1993 and 2019 occurred while it was in transport.
How to further strengthen nuclear security during transport is one of the topics that will be discussed at the IAEA’s upcoming International Conference on Nuclear Security: Sustaining and Strengthening Efforts (ICONS 2020). The conference will provide a forum for ministers, policymakers, senior officials and experts to discuss current approaches and priorities for nuclear security.
“There are a lot of moving parts when transporting these materials, which makes them an appealing target for theft or sabotage,” said David Ladsous, Head of the Transport Security Unit at the IAEA. “Secure transport at every step is essential to ensuring society can continue to benefit from these materials, while keeping them out of the hands of terrorists or criminals.”
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Around 20 million shipments of nuclear and other radioactive material are regularly transported within countries and across borders each year. These materials are used in industry, agriculture and medicine, as well as in education. Some of them are also radioactive sources that are no longer useful, known as disused sources.
The aim of nuclear security during transport is to ensure that the material is secured throughout and that it is not used for criminal or malicious purposes. While the level of security differs depending on the sensitivity of the material, the fundamental elements of secure transport include physical protection, administrative measures, training and protection of information about the transport routes and schedule. In some cases, escort personnel may also need to be armed.
Some of the major challenges with transport include the fluidity of the situation and the need to continually assess any potential threats and adjust the plans accordingly.
“At a stationary facility, it is easier to protect a radioactive source, or a disused source, through the facility’s security systems and measures as well as its layers of defense. When it is in transport, there are many more variables, people involved and context changes with every mile travelled. Even an incident as small as a minor traffic collision could freeze the flow of traffic and paralyze the movement of people and goods,” Ladsous said.
To prepare for all possible scenarios, the professionals involved, such as operators, regulators, police, military, and health and environmental agencies, have to use agreed operational procedures and communication methods. These coordinated efforts are guided by legislation and regulations that designate appropriate responsibilities to the relevant authorities, outline communication procedures and ensure sufficient financial support. When this coordination occurs internationally, it involves all relevant customs and transit authorities, which is often facilitated with support from the IAEA.
“During conversion of our research reactor from high enriched to low enriched uranium fuel, we had to transport highly radioactive spent reactor fuel from the site to the airport to be sent back to the original manufacturer, and we had to transport the new low enriched uranium fuel from the airport to the facility,” said Yusuf A. Ahmed, Director of the Centre for Energy Research and Training in Nigeria, who was involved in the conversion project. “Although the transport time is only a few hours, there is a lot that can happen during that time, from simple traffic accidents to malicious interventions and sabotage of shipments.”
Upon request, the IAEA also helps countries to draft regulations associated with transport security. In 2019, the IAEA supported more than 15 countries in drafting transport security requirements.
“As a country embarking on nuclear power, we will be transporting a significant amount of nuclear material and radioactive sources on our roads,” said Sami Sulaiman, Chairman of the Egyptian Nuclear and Radiological Regulatory Authority. “In early 2020, we will have a decree, drafted with IAEA assistance, that will strictly regulate any movement of such material.”
While only around 30 countries use nuclear power and therefore have significant amounts of nuclear materials to transport, almost all countries use radioactive sources. The IAEA assists countries with the security of disused sources. Such sources are beyond their useful life but can remain radioactive for a long time and frequently require transport to temporary storage facilities or permanent repositories.
“Whether it’s a disused source or radioactive material that’s ready for use, these materials need well-coordinated nuclear security systems and measures to minimize the vulnerabilities of transport and strengthen nuclear security overall,” Ladsous said.”
Link: https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/a-moving-target-nuclear-security-during-transport
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Getting into the Waste Storage Business?
A tunnel at Yucca Mountain
Northwest Public Broadcasting spells out proposals for managing nuclear waste. What do you think of letting private companies handle the nuclear waste management?
As Nuclear Waste Piles Up, Private Companies Pitch New Ways To Store It
By Jeff Brady
Northwest Public Broadcasting, 2 May 2019
Notes: Discusses the Peace Bottom Atomic Power Station in Delta, Pennsylvania. Some interesting graphics are included in the article!
Article Excerpt(s):
Congress is once again debating how to dispose of the country’s growing inventory of nuclear waste. Wyoming Republican Sen. John Barrasso is proposing legislation that would jumpstart licensing hearings for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage site in Nevada. The Trump administration also is asking Congress for money to resume work on that decades-old project.
But that may not end local opposition or a longstanding political stalemate. And in the meantime, nuclear plants are running out of room to store spent fuel.
Running Out Of Room
The Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station in South Central Pennsylvania illustrates the problem. It’s one of 80 sites, across dozens of states, where nearly 80,000 metric tons of waste from power plants is stored where it was generated, at taxpayer expense.
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Spent fuel removed from the Peach Bottom reactor is first stored in racks in a big pool. It’s surrounded by a bright yellow plastic barrier and signs that read “Caution: Radiation Area.”
“They are under about 22 feet of water,” says Reactor Engineering Manager Mark Parrish. “They are continuously being cooled, as they still have some amount of decay heat even after they’ve operated in the reactor.”
The spent fuel stays here for seven to 10 years while it cools.
Once it’s safe to remove the spent fuel from the pool, it’s stored outside in white, metal casks that look like big water heaters. They are lined up on a concrete base, behind razor wire and against a hillside near the power plant.
Currently there are 89 casks at Peach Bottom with room for three more, says Pat Navin, site vice president for Exelon, the company that partially owns and operates the power plant.
“That is 40 years worth of spent fuel stored over there currently and it’s less than the size of a football field,” says Navin. “Probably half a football field.”
It’s a surprisingly small amount of waste when you consider that’s enough spent fuel to produce about 10 percent of Pennsylvania’s electricity over four decades.
But without a permanent disposal site, Navin says they’re going to run out of room. So they’re expanding the temporary storage to hold all the waste generated through the 60-years the plant is licensed to operate.
Navin says this storage is safe. The metal containers are sturdy enough to withstand things like an earthquake and, eventually, a move.
“When the opportunity comes for these to be sent somewhere else then these will double as a shipping container as well,” he says.
Private Companies Propose Their Own Storage Plans
As the waste piles up, private companies are stepping in with their own solutions for the nation’s radioactive spent fuel. One is proposing a temporary storage site in New Mexico, and another is seeking a license for a site in Texas.
But most experts agree that what’s needed is a permanent site, like Yucca Mountain, that doesn’t require humans to manage it.
“Institutions go away,” says Edwin Lyman, acting director of the Nuclear Safety Project at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “There’s no guarantee the owner will still be around for the duration of time when that waste remains dangerous, which is tens or hundreds of thousands of years.”
A California company says it has a viable plan for permanent storage. Deep Isolation wants to store spent fuel in holes drilled at least a thousand feet underground in stable rock formations. The company says the waste would be separate from groundwater and in a place where it can’t hurt people.
“I like to imagine having a playground at the top of the Deep Isolation bore hole where my kids and I can go play,” says CEO Elizabeth Muller.
Last November Muller’s company conducted a test north of Austin, Texas. Crews lowered an 80-pound canister into a drilled hole. It was a simulation, so no radioactive substances were involved. The goal was to determine whether they could retrieve the canister, too.
The test was successful, and that’s important. Regulators require retrieval because new technology could develop to better deal with the spent fuel. And the public is less likely to accept disposal programs that can’t be reversed, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Proving the waste can be retrieved may be the easy part. The bigger challenge is federal law, which doesn’t allow private companies to permanently store nuclear waste from power plants.
Current law also says all the waste should end up at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. By contrast, Deep Isolation’s technology would store waste at sites around the country, likely near existing nuclear power plants.
“I just don’t see how there would be political support from every other state, other than Nevada, for changing the law, so that spent nuclear fuel could stay in your state forever,” says Lyman.
Of course, despite the law, all that waste in dozens of states is staying put for now.
Link: https://www.nwpb.org/2019/05/02/as-nuclear-waste-piles-up-private-companies-pitch-new-ways-to-store-it/
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Nuclear Courtship of Indigenous Communities
The Aboriginal People’s Television Network (APTN) recently released a two-part documentary called “Nuclear Courtship” which discusses plans for a deep geological repository (nuclear waste dump) in Northern Ontario. The documentary is quite interesting and I recommend checking it out. It is available at these links:
Part One: https://aptnnews.ca/2020/02/07/indigenous-communities-courted-as-nuclear-industry-looks-for-place-to-put-used-fuel/
Part Two: https://aptnnews.ca/2020/02/14/opportunity-for-youth-or-sacrifice-zone-community-reaction-to-nuclear-waste-burial-plan-is-mixed/
Radioactivity Dumped Near the Columbia River
2.5 Million Pounds Of Radioactive Waste Illegally Dumped In Oregon Landfill Near Columbia River
By Monica Samayoa
Northwest Public Broadcasting, 15 February 2020
Article Excerpt:
“Goodnight Midstream provides brine water supply and recycling services to the oil and gas industry for fracking operations. The liquid that Chemical Waste Management had received had been in contact with rocks underground that contained radium, said ODOE’s nuclear waste remediation specialist Jeff Burright.
“Then they filtered that water so that they can reuse it, that radium was captured in what are known as filter socks, which are very long teabags if you will, and it accumulated there and what we’ve gathered is about 80% of the total waste consisted of these filter socks,” Burright said.
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Oregon has a threshold of five picocuries per gram of radium 226. Picocuries are a measurement of the radioactivity in a liter of air.
“The waste that was received at Chemical Waste Management Arlington had a range of concentrations over the time running from just a few picocuries per gram up to the maximum in about one and half tons total was around 1,700 picocuries per gram,” Burright said.
Initially, Chemical Waste Management had no records of a relationship with Goodnight Midstream. But it was later confirmed that the North Dakota company contracted a third party, Oilfield Waste Logistics, to dispose of its solid waste. Shipping manifests showed that OWL was sending Goodnight Midstream’s waste to Arlington.
“OWL basically misrepresented the fact that this waste could come into Oregon. … In the manifest that they provided to Chemical Waste Management Arlington, it basically said that this waste does fit within Oregon’s regulations,” Niles said. “The other part of the problem is that Chemical Waste Management did not do their due diligence to ensure what they were being told by OWL was in fact accurate.”
ODOE’s notice of violation has directed Chemical Waste Management to prepare a risk assessment to develop a corrective action plan to prevent recurrence. This will also help determine the best and safest course of action for the waste that is already buried in the landfill near the Columbia River.
ODOE hasn’t issued any fines associated with the illegal dumping of radioactive waste. Officials said it doesn’t meet the criteria that would qualify for a fine. ODOE expects the risk assessment action plan to be submitted by the end of April.
“This is the first time that we’ve had an incident like this that we have become aware that radioactive material has been brought into the state and illegally disposed in violation of our rules,” Niles said.
Dan Serres from the Columbia Riverkeeper said the news of the illegal dumping of fracking waste is a serious violation of the public trust and it’s a huge risk for Oregonians.
“It’s seems unacceptable that Oregon can be used as a radioactive fracking waste dump for three years,” Serres said.
“Oregon is trying to move in the direction of clean energy and what this tells us is, it is urgently important to stop using fracked gas and fracked oil as quickly as possible, because of these health risks that come with fracking to workers and communities where this toxic material is being dumped,” Serres said.
Waste Management Inc. officials said in a written statement that they are cooperating with state regulators and are committed to improving the procedures they use to ensure they’re complying with Oregon law. They said they now send waste samples to an independent technical experts for analysis prior to accepting it.”
Link: https://www.nwpb.org/2020/02/15/2-5-million-pounds-of-radioactive-waste-illegally-dumped-in-oregon-landfill-near-columbia-river
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This article seems to imply that individual states should be able to decide what substances may not be brought into them. Since there are 50 US states, that seems to be an inefficient way of handling the problem. Why not have a truly objective, scientific EPA make such decisions for the whole country? I guess the answer may be that the EPA has to obey the US president, who happens to be Donald Trump right now. States are more likely to have good sense than the federal administration. At least at the moment.
France tested nuclear weapons in Algeria
This is ground zero for French nuclear test in the Sahara
The Algerian tests (Ekker and Reganne) totaled 17 tests during the early and mid-1960s. Testing of the atomic bomb stopped in Algeria in 1966.
For a few links to articles about these tests:
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Title: Algeria: 60 Years On, French Nuclear Tests Leave Bitter Fallout
Author: Bryant, Elizabeth
Publication(s): Deutsche Welle (DW)
Date: 13 February 2020
Link: https://www.dw.com/en/algeria-60-years-on-french-nuclear-tests-leave-bitter-fallout/a-52354351
Notes: This article identifies the post-colonial legacy of France’s nuclear testing (17 tests) in Algeria. The article additionally identifies how to date only a few hundred people – including only one Algerian – have been compensated.
Title: Diplomatic Effects Of The French Nuclear Tests In Algeria
Author: D., Romana
Publication(s): ArcGis: StoryMaps
Date: 1 November 2019
Link: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/6cd1a9ef9d284557a90b2c353b5f5875
Notes: This site discusses how France used the atomic bomb to shape its foreign policy and place as a global power.
Title: Algerians Suffering From French Atomic Legacy, 55 Years After Nuke Tests
Author: Magdaleno, Johnny
Publication(s): AlJaazera America
Date: 1 March 2015
Link:
Notes: AlJaazera identifies how France has had little accountability for the atomic tests in Algeria. This article additionally identifies how people in remote desert communities near the test site would re-use the melted metal remains of objects that were tested on. This melted metal was then re-used to create jewelry and kitchen utensils. It may still be radioactive.
Title: Declassified Files Expose Lies Of French Nuclear Tests
Author: Todd, Tony
Publication(s): France24
Date: 14 February 2014
Link: https://www.france24.com/en/20140214-map-shows-huge-radiation-spread-french-saharan-nuclear-tests
Notes: Todd’s article Identifies that the radioactive contamination from the testing site in Algeria is significantly larger than France initially claimed. The radioactive fall out from the Gerboise Blue site spreads from the Central African Republic to Southern Spain.
Title: Algeria Seeks New Compensation Over French Nuclear Tests
Author: Yurou
Publication(s): Xinhua Net
Date: 29 January 2018
Link:
Notes: This article discusses the ongoing dialogues between Algeria and France to determine a formal compensation plan and program for those impacted by the atomic bomb testing in Algeria.
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Hanford’s Glassification Plan
By John Stang
Already 12 years behind schedule, a project at the Hanford nuclear complex meant to transform millions of gallons of radioactive waste into benign glass faces yet another delay.
Since the 1990s, Washington state has been prodding the U.S. Department of Energy to build two “glassification” plants at Hanford that would permanently contain the waste stored in aging tanks on the site. Delays have added to the cost of the project, now estimated at $17 billion.
Glassification was supposed to begin in 2007. On the current schedule, lower-level radioactive waste wouldn’t be entombed in glass cylinders until 2023. And the high-level radioactive wastes? At present, glassification of that waste is set to begin in 2036, 29 years behind the original deadline.
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The Energy Department wants to push that target back even further, and last month began negotiations with state leaders to do so. Those negotiations are also expected to address whether additional tanks must be built to hold the waste, a move the state supports, but which the DOE has been reluctant to adopt
“We want to try to come up with a schedule that doesn’t have to be revised every few years,” said Suzanne Dahl, section manager for tank waste management with the state Department of Ecology. Dahl noted that the longer the project takes, the more it will cost the federal government.
Located dead center in the 584-square-mile Hanford Nuclear Reservation is the most radiologically and chemically polluted spot in the Western Hemisphere. The site’s 177 underground tanks hold 56 million gallons of radioactive fluids, sludges and chunks, mixtures of roughly 100 different substances.
Hanford’s 149 single-shell tanks are all beyond their design lives, and at least 67 have leaked. More than 1 million gallons of waste have seeped into the ground in a plume extending toward the Columbia River, seven miles away. Some of the leaked waste has reached the river.
The site also has 28 newer, safer double-shell tanks, which are now at the end of their design lives. The inner shell has leaked in one of the double-shell tanks, rendering it useless.
Since the mid-1990s, Hanford’s master plan has been to build a facility to mix and melt the waste with glass flakes to encase the radioactive substances in huge glass logs capable of holding in the radiation for 10,000 years. The basic concept has been to create a pretreatment plant to separate highly radioactive waste from less radioactive, or “low-activity,” waste. A glassification plant would be built for each stream.
Roughly one-third of Hanford’s radioactive waste can be tackled in the low-activity waste facility, Dahl said. Another third is encased in salt cakes, which must be dissolved before the waste can be processed at the low-activity waste plant. The final third is just too radioactive and must wait until the high-level waste plant is up and running.
Construction of the glassification complex began in 2002. The cost of the project has increased from $4 billion in 2000 to about $17 billion today.
The Department of Ecology and Energy Department have anticipated new delays in the high-level waste glassification facility.
In late 2017, the Energy Department told the state it had concerns about the plants’ costs and design risks, hinting start-up of the low-activity waste plant could be 2024 instead of 2023. However, Dahl and Alex Smith, the Department of Ecology nuclear program manager, recently said in an interview that the state still expects the low-activity waste plant to open in 2023.
In May, Maia Bellon, director of the Department of Ecology, wrote to Ann White, who resigned a few days later as the Energy Department’s assistant secretary for environmental management. Bellon expressed concerns that the Energy Department could miss key deadlines. The federal department had agreed to have the main pretreatment plant running by 2033, and the high-level waste treatment plant would be ready by 2036. In September, it told the state it has concerns about meeting those deadlines.
“All this caused extensive heartburn at the state level,” Dahl said
In a statement to Crosscut, an Energy Department spokesperson said “the potential interplay” of otherwise manageable factors in the high-level waste glassification project requires a delay out of “an abundance of caution.” The department did not elaborate on those factors.
Tom Carpenter, executive director of the Seattle-based watchdog organization Hanford Challenge, contended that a major problem is that the Energy Department accepted a flawed approach to the glassification project at the turn of the century.
A basic piece of the project’s design is the use of black cells — sections that will become too radioactive for humans to enter — which would greatly hamper any work to fix inevitable mechanical and chemical troubles or replace equipment. Carpenter said the project should have adopted an approach used in plutonium processing plants built during World War II and the Cold War. Each plant contains a battleship-sized room called a “canyon,” with massive cranes set up to reach and move every piece of radioactive equipment in the massive chamber.
Carpenter also noted that having a single main pretreatment plant is a bottleneck.
The Energy Department is working on building a second, small pretreatment facility for the low-activity waste glassification plant. That quick-to-be-built facility will filter out cesium 137, one of the highly radioactive substances in the tank wastes. The Energy Department hopes that removing the cesium will be enough to convert some highly radioactive wastes to low-activity wastes.
Meanwhile, state officials argue that the feds have not funded the glassification effort at the level everyone agreed, almost two decades ago, was needed to keep the project on schedule.
The glassification complex’s annual budget has held steady at $690 million since the project began, despite predictions that the appropriation needed to be increased to keep construction on track. The state said it does not have a definitive figure on how much the annual budget should have grown; a 2011 Department of Ecology estimate suggested it would need to reach up to $900 million. No increase ever materialized.
Another problem has been the quality of construction.
In 2010, Walt Tamosaitis, an employee of the subcontractor designing the pretreatment plant, URS Corp., told his superiors and managers at lead contractor Bechtel National that several design problems had not been solved.
There was risk of hydrogen gas explosions that could bend and burst pipes in the plant, spraying radioactive fluids. Radioactive sludges could clog the pipes and tanks in the plant, increasing the chance of uncontrolled releases of radiation. And there was a risk of corrosion causing leaks in the pretreatment plant.
Tamosaitis’ superiors told the Energy Department that the design problems were fixed as of July 1, 2010 — over Tamosaitis’s protests but in time for Bechtel to collect a $5 million bonus from the department.
For raising the alarm, Tamosaitis alleges, he was demoted and exiled to an insignificant offsite job. He filed a lawsuit against Bechtel, alleging illegal retaliation, eventually winning a $4.1 million settlement. Meanwhile in 2011 and 2012, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, a technical advisory body monitoring the Energy Department, and the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, confirmed Tamosaitis’ concerns.
In 2015, the Energy Department announced that it would not have the entire complex operational by the 2022 deadline. It pointed to the same issues Tamosaitis had identified.
The state contends the Energy Department needs to install two to four new underground tanks at an estimated cost of $100 million each. So far, the Energy Department has been disinclined to do so and has not budgeted for them. The state wants to tackle the matter during the ongoing negotiations, though the federal department has been noncommittal.
Waste will have to be shifted between the tanks before it is funneled into the low-activity waste plant. Water is sometimes sprayed into the tanks to break up solid wastes, another process that requires extra tanks to hold the liquids. At the same time, the specter looms of additional leaks showing up in the inner shells of the double-shell tanks.
Carpenter fears that the continual delays will prompt the feds to give up on glassification and return to a previously rejected cheaper method, encasing waste in concrete grout.
Carpenter said discussions have popped up in federal circles that grout should be considered again as a quicker, cheaper and less-headache-inducing approach. “Their fallback for all of that is concrete. All you hear is ‘grout, grout, grout,’ ” he said.
Concrete has a lifespan of decades, not millennia, before it falls apart, Carpenter said. “It’s not going to last,” he said. “These radionuclides have [lifespans of] hundreds of thousands of years, or even millions of years.”
The state-federal negotiations are tentatively set to be finished no later than July 31 [2020].”
From Crosscut
[/read]
Well, vitrification is probably as good as most other possible methods for making the waste inaccessible, but it is not easy to do. I hear that some outfit is proposing to add iron to the mixture before the heating is done. Is that an improvement? Maybe a reader can answer me.
12 Years And Counting: Effort To Lock Hanford’s Radioactive Waste In Glass Faces More Delays
By John Stang
Crosscut, 14 February 2019
Article Excerpt:
“Already 12 years behind schedule, a project at the Hanford nuclear complex meant to transform millions of gallons of radioactive waste into benign glass faces yet another delay.
Since the 1990s, Washington state has been prodding the U.S. Department of Energy to build two “glassification” plants at Hanford that would permanently contain the waste stored in aging tanks on the site. Delays have added to the cost of the project, now estimated at $17 billion.
Glassification was supposed to begin in 2007. On the current schedule, lower-level radioactive waste wouldn’t be entombed in glass cylinders until 2023. And the high-level radioactive wastes? At present, glassification of that waste is set to begin in 2036, 29 years behind the original deadline.
The Energy Department wants to push that target back even further, and last month began negotiations with state leaders to do so. Those negotiations are also expected to address whether additional tanks must be built to hold the waste, a move the state supports, but which the DOE has been reluctant to adopt
“We want to try to come up with a schedule that doesn’t have to be revised every few years,” said Suzanne Dahl, section manager for tank waste management with the state Department of Ecology. Dahl noted that the longer the project takes, the more it will cost the federal government.
Located dead center in the 584-square-mile Hanford Nuclear Reservation is the most radiologically and chemically polluted spot in the Western Hemisphere. The site’s 177 underground tanks hold 56 million gallons of radioactive fluids, sludges and chunks, mixtures of roughly 100 different substances.
Hanford’s 149 single-shell tanks are all beyond their design lives, and at least 67 have leaked. More than 1 million gallons of waste have seeped into the ground in a plume extending toward the Columbia River, seven miles away. Some of the leaked waste has reached the river.
The site also has 28 newer, safer double-shell tanks, which are now at the end of their design lives. The inner shell has leaked in one of the double-shell tanks, rendering it useless.
Since the mid-1990s, Hanford’s master plan has been to build a facility to mix and melt the waste with glass flakes to encase the radioactive substances in huge glass logs capable of holding in the radiation for 10,000 years. The basic concept has been to create a pretreatment plant to separate highly radioactive waste from less radioactive, or “low-activity,” waste. A glassification plant would be built for each stream.
Roughly one-third of Hanford’s radioactive waste can be tackled in the low-activity waste facility, Dahl said. Another third is encased in salt cakes, which must be dissolved before the waste can be processed at the low-activity waste plant. The final third is just too radioactive and must wait until the high-level waste plant is up and running.
Construction of the glassification complex began in 2002. The cost of the project has increased from $4 billion in 2000 to about $17 billion today.
The Department of Ecology and Energy Department have anticipated new delays in the high-level waste glassification facility.
In late 2017, the Energy Department told the state it had concerns about the plants’ costs and design risks, hinting start-up of the low-activity waste plant could be 2024 instead of 2023. However, Dahl and Alex Smith, the Department of Ecology nuclear program manager, recently said in an interview that the state still expects the low-activity waste plant to open in 2023.
In May, Maia Bellon, director of the Department of Ecology, wrote to Ann White, who resigned a few days later as the Energy Department’s assistant secretary for environmental management. Bellon expressed concerns that the Energy Department could miss key deadlines. The federal department had agreed to have the main pretreatment plant running by 2033, and the high-level waste treatment plant would be ready by 2036. In September, it told the state it has concerns about meeting those deadlines.
“All this caused extensive heartburn at the state level,” Dahl said
In a statement to Crosscut, an Energy Department spokesperson said “the potential interplay” of otherwise manageable factors in the high-level waste glassification project requires a delay out of “an abundance of caution.” The department did not elaborate on those factors.
Tom Carpenter, executive director of the Seattle-based watchdog organization Hanford Challenge, contended that a major problem is that the Energy Department accepted a flawed approach to the glassification project at the turn of the century.
A basic piece of the project’s design is the use of black cells — sections that will become too radioactive for humans to enter — which would greatly hamper any work to fix inevitable mechanical and chemical troubles or replace equipment. Carpenter said the project should have adopted an approach used in plutonium processing plants built during World War II and the Cold War. Each plant contains a battleship-sized room called a “canyon,” with massive cranes set up to reach and move every piece of radioactive equipment in the massive chamber.
Carpenter also noted that having a single main pretreatment plant is a bottleneck.
The Energy Department is working on building a second, small pretreatment facility for the low-activity waste glassification plant. That quick-to-be-built facility will filter out cesium 137, one of the highly radioactive substances in the tank wastes. The Energy Department hopes that removing the cesium will be enough to convert some highly radioactive wastes to low-activity wastes.
Meanwhile, state officials argue that the feds have not funded the glassification effort at the level everyone agreed, almost two decades ago, was needed to keep the project on schedule.
The glassification complex’s annual budget has held steady at $690 million since the project began, despite predictions that the appropriation needed to be increased to keep construction on track. The state said it does not have a definitive figure on how much the annual budget should have grown; a 2011 Department of Ecology estimate suggested it would need to reach up to $900 million. No increase ever materialized.
Another problem has been the quality of construction.
In 2010, Walt Tamosaitis, an employee of the subcontractor designing the pretreatment plant, URS Corp., told his superiors and managers at lead contractor Bechtel National that several design problems had not been solved.
There was risk of hydrogen gas explosions that could bend and burst pipes in the plant, spraying radioactive fluids. Radioactive sludges could clog the pipes and tanks in the plant, increasing the chance of uncontrolled releases of radiation. And there was a risk of corrosion causing leaks in the pretreatment plant.
Tamosaitis’ superiors told the Energy Department that the design problems were fixed as of July 1, 2010 — over Tamosaitis’s protests but in time for Bechtel to collect a $5 million bonus from the department.
For raising the alarm, Tamosaitis alleges, he was demoted and exiled to an insignificant offsite job. He filed a lawsuit against Bechtel, alleging illegal retaliation, eventually winning a $4.1 million settlement. Meanwhile in 2011 and 2012, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, a technical advisory body monitoring the Energy Department, and the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, confirmed Tamosaitis’ concerns.
In 2015, the Energy Department announced that it would not have the entire complex operational by the 2022 deadline. It pointed to the same issues Tamosaitis had identified.
The state contends the Energy Department needs to install two to four new underground tanks at an estimated cost of $100 million each. So far, the Energy Department has been disinclined to do so and has not budgeted for them. The state wants to tackle the matter during the ongoing negotiations, though the federal department has been noncommittal.
Waste will have to be shifted between the tanks before it is funneled into the low-activity waste plant. Water is sometimes sprayed into the tanks to break up solid wastes, another process that requires extra tanks to hold the liquids. At the same time, the specter looms of additional leaks showing up in the inner shells of the double-shell tanks.
Carpenter fears that the continual delays will prompt the feds to give up on glassification and return to a previously rejected cheaper method, encasing waste in concrete grout.
Carpenter said discussions have popped up in federal circles that grout should be considered again as a quicker, cheaper and less-headache-inducing approach. “Their fallback for all of that is concrete. All you hear is ‘grout, grout, grout,’ ” he said.
Concrete has a lifespan of decades, not millennia, before it falls apart, Carpenter said. “It’s not going to last,” he said. “These radionuclides have [lifespans of] hundreds of thousands of years, or even millions of years.”
The state-federal negotiations are tentatively set to be finished no later than July 31 [2020].”
Link: https://crosscut.com/2019/11/12-years-and-counting-effort-lock-hanfords-radioactive-waste-glass-faces-more-delays
[/read]
Schools of Mass Destruction!
Summary Excerpt:
“Universities across the United States are identified in this new report for activities ranging from directly managing laboratories that design nuclear weapons to recruiting and training the next generation of nuclear weapons scientists. Much of universities’ nuclear weapons work is kept secret from students and faculty by classified research policies and undisclosed contracts with the Defense Department and the Energy Department.
The goal of the report is to spark ethical reflection and action about institutional and individual involvement in the nuclear weapons complex. Specifically, the report recommends:
1) Provide greater transparency into connections with the nuclear weapons complex;
[read more]
2) Stop directly managing nuclear weapons production sites and dissolve research contracts solely related to nuclear weapons production;
3) For contracts with dual-purpose research applications, demand greater transparency and create specific processes for ethical review of this research;
4) Advocate for reinvestment of weapons activities funding to non-proliferation and environmental remediation efforts;
5) Join cities and state legislatures in urging the federal government to support the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and reverse course on nuclear arms control backsliding.”
Shocking sums of money being spent on upgrading the United States nuclear weapons arsenal. According to the Executive Report mentioned above:
“Over the next ten years, the Congressional Budget Office estimates U.S. taxpayers will pay nearly $500 billion to maintain
and modernize their country’s nuclear weapons arsenal, or almost $100,000 per minute. A separate
estimate brings the total over the next 30 years to an estimated $1.7 trillion.”
The project’s executive report can be found at this link:
Link: https://universities.icanw.org/schools_of_mass_destruction
[/read]
The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Site Has Always Been A Political Football. Trump Is The Latest President To Fumble
By Allison Macfarlane
As with much policy-setting in the Trump administration, a single tweet from the president on February 6 appeared to reverse a previous stance. The message about Yucca Mountain, the nation’s proposed geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel and other high-level radioactive waste, set the media alight with speculation about new actions in US nuclear waste policy. But has anything changed, really?
The new policy, if it is such a thing, is a little wobbly. It’s unclear whether the administration is or is not supporting Yucca Mountain as a waste repository. The Energy Department’s Undersecretary for Nuclear Energy and nominee for Deputy Secretary, Mark Menezes, stated six days later in a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing that “what we’re trying to do is to put together a process that will give us a path to permanent storage at Yucca.” A White House official tried to square the circle of conflicting messages, stating: “There is zero daylight between the President and Undersecretary Menezes on the issue.”
At the same time, Trump’s fiscal year 2021 budget did not include funds for Yucca Mountain, unlike in previous years. In point of fact, though, Congress has not appropriated funding for Yucca Mountain in the past decade. The proposed repository site made it about halfway through the licensing process at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and halted when the Obama administration’s Energy Department tried to pull the license application. The state of Nevada still strongly opposes Yucca Mountain and hasn’t changed its tune since passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act Amendments in 1987 (colloquially known in Nevada as the Screw Nevada Bill), which designated Yucca Mountain as the proposed repository site.
[read more]
Trump’s tweet acknowledges the fierce and long-standing opposition to Yucca Mountain in a swing state he lost by a slim margin in 2016. The Democratic presidential candidates are unanimously opposed to storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.
A permanent impasse. Yucca Mountain has spent much of its existence as a political football. The original Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 required detailed characterization of three potential repository sites for the disposal of the nation’s spent commercial nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste from the nuclear weapons complex. By 1986 it was clear that work on three sites would be very costly, and Congress balked at the price tag. Political wrangling ensued, and it was no accident that among the three states under consideration—Nevada, Texas, and Washington—the one with the most-junior congressional delegation, including a newly elected Senator Harry Reid, was selected as the only site to be characterized by the Energy Department for suitability as a repository.
Thereafter, appropriation of funds for work on Yucca Mountain was continuously subject to political whims in Congress. Senator Reid, for instance, repeatedly blocked funding for Yucca Mountain after the House had approved it. And it’s an old adage among US nuclear waste experts that nothing ever happens with nuclear waste during an election year.
At the moment, no one involved in the process has an incentive to make progress. An extremely partisan House and Senate are at a permanent impasse on an issue that bears little on re-election chances (except in Nevada). The nuclear industry has found they can build new reactors—the two Westinghouse AP1000 units under construction in Georgia—without a solution to their spent fuel problem. The Energy Department, originally tasked with solving the problem, has no legal authority (or appropriations) to move forward. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which passed a Continued Storage Rule in 2014, vacated its ability to force a solution. And many anti-nuclear interest groups that oppose waste transport and repositories have called for “hardened on-site storage.”
Pressure to do something is building, though, as more reactors shut down around the country. Since 2013, nine reactors have permanently closed, and by 2025 at least six more are slated to join them. These 15 will join the 12 reactors already shut down, for a total of 27 around the country. Eleven of them have been or are being completely decommissioned, so all that will remain on site will be the spent fuel, awaiting a solution. Leaving spent fuel in dry storage in perpetuity is not a solution: The casks won’t last forever and will need to be changed out periodically (experts do not yet know how long they will last). Can the American public ensure that a benevolent government will exist 50, 100, or 1,000 years from now to carry out this task? We cannot.
“Solutions” that aren’t. Both President Trump and Undersecretary Menezes referenced “innovative approaches” to dealing with spent nuclear fuel. Are there actual alternatives to a repository at Yucca Mountain? There might be alternatives to the Yucca Mountain site, but there is no escaping the need for a deep geologic repository to dispose of spent nuclear fuel. Numerous studies have come to this conclusion, including the US National Research Council, the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future established by the Obama administration to consider alternative strategies of nuclear waste disposal (I served on the commission), and a recent report out of Stanford and George Washington Universities (I was on the steering committee for the report).
Ideas such as “advanced” reactors that use waste as fuel, deep borehole disposal, and the perpetually-proposed reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel have all been presented as solutions to our current dilemma. None are. Studies that my colleagues and I have done, and the National Research Council consensus report, show that all reactors and reprocessing schemes produce wastes that are highly active and long-lived and therefore still require disposal.
The Trump administration appears interested in reviving reprocessing as a “solution” for spent nuclear fuel. It’s not a solution, simply a costly management strategy. The few countries that still reprocess spent fuel, such as France, plan to use a geologic repository for the high-level waste produced. France, in fact, has already selected a site for its repository. Even if somehow, as some claim, reprocessing reduced wastes to those dominated by 30-year half-lives, a repository would still be required as, again, institutions cannot be guaranteed to last 300 years, the amount of time needed for the waste to fully decay. With impending climate-change effects such as significant sea level rise by 2100, who knows what the world will look like in 300 years, both physically and politically?
Deep boreholes, though perhaps appropriate for some radioactive wastes, would be hard-pressed to handle spent fuel due in part to the narrow borehole diameter, limited to thin-walled canisters that can only hold one spent fuel assembly each. The thin walls and significantly more numerous canisters would increase worker doses and reduce the canisters’ strength to resist the overlying rock burden. The depth of the boreholes—up to 5 kilometers—and the limited ability to access them without disturbing the natural environment would result in a limited capability to adequately characterize the geologic environment at depth. Even more challenging would be to ensure that radioactivity cannot escape up the backfilled borehole.
Political innovations needed. All countries with commercial nuclear energy programs agree that geologic repositories are the only solution to the problem of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. The problems facing repositories are not primarily technical (though these exist), but political. Political innovations are truly needed to successfully site these facilities.
Such innovations already exist: Finland is currently constructing its deep geologic repository, and Sweden isn’t far behind. Switzerland, France, and Canada have all made significant progress in the last few years. The United States, in fact, is the only country with an operating deep geologic repository—the Waste Isolation Pilot Project that houses transuranic waste from the nuclear weapons complex in southeastern New Mexico—proving that it can be done here.
There are important lessons to learn from the mistakes and successes of these other programs: The host community must accept the site by a large majority; the host community must be compensated; it must be allowed to veto the site, up to a predefined point in the process; the process works best when the host community is allowed to participate in site development and conduct its own independent research; the nuclear waste management organization and the nuclear regulator must be trusted institutions; and the waste management organization must have the ability to manage its own budget and plan for the long term.
None of this is rocket science, and these lessons have been spelled out numerous times in the United States. The real question is whether anyone with political power is listening.”
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 21 February 2020
[/read]
The Endless Saga of Yucca Mountain
The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Site Has Always Been A Political Football. Trump Is The Latest President To Fumble
By Allison Macfarlane
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 21 February 2020
Tunnel in Yucca Mountain
Notes: Discusses the ongoing challenge that the Yucca Mountain site poses – as well as the need for political innovation in the field of nuclear waste management and storage.
Article Excerpt:
“As with much policy-setting in the Trump administration, a single tweet from the president on February 6 appeared to reverse a previous stance. The message about Yucca Mountain, the nation’s proposed geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel and other high-level radioactive waste, set the media alight with speculation about new actions in US nuclear waste policy. But has anything changed, really?
The new policy, if it is such a thing, is a little wobbly. It’s unclear whether the administration is or is not supporting Yucca Mountain as a waste repository. The Energy Department’s Undersecretary for Nuclear Energy and nominee for Deputy Secretary, Mark Menezes, stated six days later in a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing that “what we’re trying to do is to put together a process that will give us a path to permanent storage at Yucca.” A White House official tried to square the circle of conflicting messages, stating: “There is zero daylight between the President and Undersecretary Menezes on the issue.”
At the same time, Trump’s fiscal year 2021 budget did not include funds for Yucca Mountain, unlike in previous years. In point of fact, though, Congress has not appropriated funding for Yucca Mountain in the past decade. The proposed repository site made it about halfway through the licensing process at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and halted when the Obama administration’s Energy Department tried to pull the license application. The state of Nevada still strongly opposes Yucca Mountain and hasn’t changed its tune since passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act Amendments in 1987 (colloquially known in Nevada as the Screw Nevada Bill), which designated Yucca Mountain as the proposed repository site.
Trump’s tweet acknowledges the fierce and long-standing opposition to Yucca Mountain in a swing state he lost by a slim margin in 2016. The Democratic presidential candidates are unanimously opposed to storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.
[read more]
A permanent impasse. Yucca Mountain has spent much of its existence as a political football. The original Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 required detailed characterization of three potential repository sites for the disposal of the nation’s spent commercial nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste from the nuclear weapons complex. By 1986 it was clear that work on three sites would be very costly, and Congress balked at the price tag. Political wrangling ensued, and it was no accident that among the three states under consideration—Nevada, Texas, and Washington—the one with the most-junior congressional delegation, including a newly elected Senator Harry Reid, was selected as the only site to be characterized by the Energy Department for suitability as a repository.
Thereafter, appropriation of funds for work on Yucca Mountain was continuously subject to political whims in Congress. Senator Reid, for instance, repeatedly blocked funding for Yucca Mountain after the House had approved it. And it’s an old adage among US nuclear waste experts that nothing ever happens with nuclear waste during an election year.
At the moment, no one involved in the process has an incentive to make progress. An extremely partisan House and Senate are at a permanent impasse on an issue that bears little on re-election chances (except in Nevada). The nuclear industry has found they can build new reactors—the two Westinghouse AP1000 units under construction in Georgia—without a solution to their spent fuel problem. The Energy Department, originally tasked with solving the problem, has no legal authority (or appropriations) to move forward. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which passed a Continued Storage Rule in 2014, vacated its ability to force a solution. And many anti-nuclear interest groups that oppose waste transport and repositories have called for “hardened on-site storage.”
Pressure to do something is building, though, as more reactors shut down around the country. Since 2013, nine reactors have permanently closed, and by 2025 at least six more are slated to join them. These 15 will join the 12 reactors already shut down, for a total of 27 around the country. Eleven of them have been or are being completely decommissioned, so all that will remain on site will be the spent fuel, awaiting a solution. Leaving spent fuel in dry storage in perpetuity is not a solution: The casks won’t last forever and will need to be changed out periodically (experts do not yet know how long they will last). Can the American public ensure that a benevolent government will exist 50, 100, or 1,000 years from now to carry out this task? We cannot.
“Solutions” that aren’t. Both President Trump and Undersecretary Menezes referenced “innovative approaches” to dealing with spent nuclear fuel. Are there actual alternatives to a repository at Yucca Mountain? There might be alternatives to the Yucca Mountain site, but there is no escaping the need for a deep geologic repository to dispose of spent nuclear fuel. Numerous studies have come to this conclusion, including the US National Research Council, the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future established by the Obama administration to consider alternative strategies of nuclear waste disposal (I served on the commission), and a recent report out of Stanford and George Washington Universities (I was on the steering committee for the report).
Ideas such as “advanced” reactors that use waste as fuel, deep borehole disposal, and the perpetually-proposed reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel have all been presented as solutions to our current dilemma. None are. Studies that my colleagues and I have done, and the National Research Council consensus report, show that all reactors and reprocessing schemes produce wastes that are highly active and long-lived and therefore still require disposal.
The Trump administration appears interested in reviving reprocessing as a “solution” for spent nuclear fuel. It’s not a solution, simply a costly management strategy. The few countries that still reprocess spent fuel, such as France, plan to use a geologic repository for the high-level waste produced. France, in fact, has already selected a site for its repository. Even if somehow, as some claim, reprocessing reduced wastes to those dominated by 30-year half-lives, a repository would still be required as, again, institutions cannot be guaranteed to last 300 years, the amount of time needed for the waste to fully decay. With impending climate-change effects such as significant sea level rise by 2100, who knows what the world will look like in 300 years, both physically and politically?
Deep boreholes, though perhaps appropriate for some radioactive wastes, would be hard-pressed to handle spent fuel due in part to the narrow borehole diameter, limited to thin-walled canisters that can only hold one spent fuel assembly each. The thin walls and significantly more numerous canisters would increase worker doses and reduce the canisters’ strength to resist the overlying rock burden. The depth of the boreholes—up to 5 kilometers—and the limited ability to access them without disturbing the natural environment would result in a limited capability to adequately characterize the geologic environment at depth. Even more challenging would be to ensure that radioactivity cannot escape up the backfilled borehole.
Political innovations needed. All countries with commercial nuclear energy programs agree that geologic repositories are the only solution to the problem of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. The problems facing repositories are not primarily technical (though these exist), but political. Political innovations are truly needed to successfully site these facilities.
Such innovations already exist: Finland is currently constructing its deep geologic repository, and Sweden isn’t far behind. Switzerland, France, and Canada have all made significant progress in the last few years. The United States, in fact, is the only country with an operating deep geologic repository—the Waste Isolation Pilot Project that houses transuranic waste from the nuclear weapons complex in southeastern New Mexico—proving that it can be done here.
There are important lessons to learn from the mistakes and successes of these other programs: The host community must accept the site by a large majority; the host community must be compensated; it must be allowed to veto the site, up to a predefined point in the process; the process works best when the host community is allowed to participate in site development and conduct its own independent research; the nuclear waste management organization and the nuclear regulator must be trusted institutions; and the waste management organization must have the ability to manage its own budget and plan for the long term.
None of this is rocket science, and these lessons have been spelled out numerous times in the United States. The real question is whether anyone with political power is listening.”
[/read]
Can Hemp Save Us?
Activists should all tune occasionally to the Nuclear Hotseat podcast, which is produced by Libbe HaLevy. Here’s part of one astonishing episode, number 449: Hemp: Can It Remediate Plutonium? Rockey Flats Project with Tiffany Hansen
In Rocky Flats, Colorado hemp is being used to bioremediate and phytoremediate radioactively contaminated soils. Rocky Flats is a former nuclear weapons manufacturing complex near Denver, Colorado.
Plants are known to be effective bioremediators (phytoremediation) in environmentally contaminated zones – though the plants themselves then become radioactive – leading to questions of what to do with radioactive plant materials after bioremediation projects. There are additionally questions about whether some plant species are more effective bioremediators and phytoremediators than others.
Nuclear Hotseat links to a website by Rocky Flats Downwinders which discusses this hemp bioremediation and phytoremediation project. Here is that site:
Rocky Flats Downwinders
http://rockyflatsdownwinders.com/rocky-flats-hemp-phytoremediation-project/
Article Excerpt / Notes:
A bill was passed on 18 January 2020 by the Colorado House of Representatives to study hemp’s potential in bioremediation and phytoremediation of contaminated soils.
It is additionally interesting to hear the Rockly Flats hemp bioremediation/phytoremediation project is partnered with Dr. Michael E. Ketterer of Northern Arizona University- who has previous experience researching radioactive (plutonium) contaminated environments. This partnership additionally includes regional hemp-related businesses. I sought to locate more information about the potential benefits of hemp versus other plant species in bioremediation and phytoremediation projects. There are a lot of cannabis-related activists groups and cannabis-related blogs which have re-published materials on hemp’s benefits as a bioremediator and phytoremediator. However, the source data was not immediately clear on some of these websites. Here’s the book source:
American Hemp: How Growing Our Newest Cash Crop Can Improve Our Health, Clean Our Environment, and Slow Climate Change
Chapter 8: Hemp Cures Poisoned Land
by Jen Hobbs, 16 April 2019. Skyhorse
Notes:
This chapter discusses how hemp grown in areas with heavy metal contamination can subsequently result in heavy metal poisoning upon consumption – due to the plant absorbing environmental contaminants. This chapter additionally discusses experiments in the context of Chernonbyl (1998 onward) which discovered hemp will bioremediate/phytoremediate not just heavy metals, but radioactive materials as well. A list of hemp-related environmental remediation projects is provided as well.
BWXT’s Uranium vs the Neighbours
BWXT operates two uranium processing plants which are up for licensing review: one in Peterborough ON and one in Toronto ON. Both are in dense residential neighbourhoods. The uranium processing plant in Peterborough ON is across the street from the Prince of Wales Public (Elementary) School and has requested to double the size of the plant via a licensing provision that would allow the Toronto operations to move to Peterborough if the Toronto plant closes down.
Alarming — considering the adjacent residential areas and schools. The Toronto plant is near Dupont Street and Lansdowne Avenue and is going to have new residential developments immediately across the street. What if an emergency situation (explosion, fire, etc.) unfolds? Is it time to move these uranium processing plants out of residential areas?
The Toronto Star published an article by Patti Winsa on the community response: “This Toronto Plant Makes Fuel for Ontario Nuclear Reactors. A group of Davenport Neighbours Want It Gone”
Article Excerpt:
Chris Muir can see the roofline of a storage building that houses radioactive uranium dioxide powder from his backyard in Toronto’s west-end.The building is part of a nondescript plant on Lansdowne Avenue, north of Dupont Street, where more than half the uranium pellets that fuel Ontario’s nuclear reactors are made each year by BWXT Nuclear Energy Canada.
[read more]
Muir said he knew the plant was there when he bought his house in 2015, but he is now one of a chorus of community members who are asking the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) to deny BWXT’s application to renew its licence for 10 years.
He made up his mind at a public information meeting CNSC staff held near the end of January in the Davenport riding.
“It’s their inability to answer some pretty straightforward questions,” said Muir, sitting in the living room of the house he shares with his wife and two kids. “I was like, ‘What happens if there is an accident there?’” he said. “And the answer was, ‘Well there won’t be.’ That’s when I got really scared.”
The Toronto plant has never had an accident. And the nuclear safety commission said testing shows radiation levels in soil and air around the plant are not only far below allowable levels, but even lower than the radiation in our everyday lives, which comes from a variety of sources including the sun as well as the breakdown of radioactive minerals found naturally in rock and soil.
However, the application to renew the licence, which includes public hearings, is one of the first opportunities many residents will have to ask questions after finding out in 2012 from a Star story that the plant — owned by GE-Hitachi until December of 2016 — was making pellets.
The story was the result of activist Zach Ruiter, a freelance journalist and Trent University graduate, who knocked on doors to alert residents that the plant existed. Ruiter said he felt there was a lack of public awareness and not enough public consultation by the CNSC.
At that time, signs on buildings at the Toronto plant simply said the company’s name — there was no indication that it was a nuclear facility.
The CNSC required GE-Hitachi to have an outreach program, but most community members didn’t know what the plant manufactured despite its presence in the neighbourhood since 1965.
Now, nearly 250 individuals and organizations have registered to intervene either as speakers or in writing during hearings in March, when the commission will hold two-day public sessions in Toronto as well as Peterborough, where BWXT owns another former GE-Hitachi plant. The Peterborough plant consolidates the pellets into fuel bundles for Ontario Power Generation’s Pickering and Darlington nuclear generating stations.
The licence renewal, which CNSC staff have recommended be approved, is for both plants.
“From the CNSC staff perspective, there are no risks,” said Caroline Ducros, director of the safety commission’s nuclear processing facilities division. “The quantities (of uranium) that are leaving the (Toronto) plant are negligible.”
Despite the assurance, Muir said he didn’t feel confident after leaving the CNSC’s public information meeting.
There were a number of unanswered questions, he said, including what happens if the tank full of highly flammable liquid hydrogen — the pellets are baked in a furnace filled with hydrogen — catches fire? What’s the blast radius? Or the company’s emergency plan?
The company says it has an internal emergency response plan for both sites, with guidelines for emergency staff and plant personnel, which is sent to the CNSC.
And that “each BWXT facility has established emergency prevention programs to minimize the risk of fires and other hazardous events, as well as robust response plans that prescribe the actions to be taken to prevent or minimize potential health and environmental hazards,” wrote Natalie Cutler, BWXT’s director of communications and government relations, in an email.
Muir also wondered why, with such an increase in public interest, so few residents knew about the CNSC information meeting, where commission staff and experts, together with BWXT employees, anti-nuclear activists and politicians seemed to outnumber the 15 or so people from the community.
Kevin Lee, a senior regulatory policy officer at the CNSC, which employs 900 staff, said the commission couldn’t afford to notify the public by advertising in newspapers because it was too expensive. The organization relies on social media.
BWXT’s application is not only generating opposition in Toronto, but in Peterborough because of a provision in the new licence that would allow BWXT to move its Toronto pelleting operation anytime during its 10-year period to Peterborough.
Activists there say they are tired of dealing with the legacy waste from the GE-Hitachi plant, which used PCBs, asbestos as well as other chemicals at the Peterborough location, although in manufacturing operations that were unrelated to the nuclear fuel bundling division bought by BWXT.
At its height in the ’60s, the GE plant in Peterborough employed 6,000 people. But the numbers steadily decreased and in 2017 the company laid off 350 employees in its large motor division, where it made motors for cruise ship propellers or to pump oil, among other things. About 50 employees remained in engineering and sales.
“It’s just worrying because there’s alway accidents and fugitive emissions whenever there’s a factory,” said Jane Scott, who became aware of GE’s nuclear division in Peterborough about 10 years ago when her children were students at nearby Prince of Wales elementary school.
“I thought what the heck is a nuclear facility doing across from the school,” Scott said.
Scott co-founded Peterborough’s Citizens Against Radioactive Neighbourhoods (CARN) in April of last year after hearing that BWXT might move the pelleting operation to Peterborough.
“Extreme events happen and people make mistakes, as BWXT has in the past. And GE before that,” Scott said. “So it’s just a no-brainer that this should not be in the heart of our downtown.”
Scott was referring to an incident at BWXT in Peterborough where two workers wore the wrong respirator filters 15 times over a two-year period, from 2015 to 2017, exposing them to airborne beryllium, a highly toxic metal used to join parts of fuel bundles together.
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Processing Uranium in the Neighborhood?
On 3 and 4 March 2020, a two-day public hearing will be taking place regarding the renewal of BWXT’s operating license. BWXT operates two uranium processing plants which are up for licensing review – one in Peterborough ON and one in Toronto ON. Both of these are in increasingly dense residential neighbourhoods. The uranium processing plant in Peterborough ON is across the street from the Prince of Wales Public (Elementary) School and has requested to double the size of the plant via a licensing provision that would allow the Toronto operations to move to Peterborough if the Toronto plant closes down. Alarming – considering the adjacent residential areas and schools. The plant in Toronto is near Dupont Street and Lansdowne Avenue and is going to have new residential developments immediately across the street. Significant concerns have arisen around the transparency of the plant regarding operations – as well as response procedures should an emergency situation (explosion, fire, etc.) unfold. Is it time to move these uranium processing plants out of residential areas?
The Toronto Star recently published an article on community response to this matter.
This Toronto Plant Makes Fuel for Ontario Nuclear Reactors. A group of Davenport Neighbours Want It Gone
By Patty Winsa
The Toronto Star, 16 February 2020
Article Excerpt:
Chris Muir can see the roofline of a storage building that houses radioactive uranium dioxide powder from his backyard in Toronto’s west-end.
The building is part of a nondescript plant on Lansdowne Avenue, north of Dupont Street, where more than half the uranium pellets that fuel Ontario’s nuclear reactors are made each year by BWXT Nuclear Energy Canada.
Muir said he knew the plant was there when he bought his house in 2015, but he is now one of a chorus of community members who are asking the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) to deny BWXT’s application to renew its licence for 10 years.
He made up his mind at a public information meeting CNSC staff held near the end of January in the Davenport riding.
“It’s their inability to answer some pretty straightforward questions,” said Muir, sitting in the living room of the house he shares with his wife and two kids. “I was like, ‘What happens if there is an accident there?’” he said. “And the answer was, ‘Well there won’t be.’ That’s when I got really scared.”
[read more]
The Toronto plant has never had an accident. And the nuclear safety commission said testing shows radiation levels in soil and air around the plant are not only far below allowable levels, but even lower than the radiation in our everyday lives, which comes from a variety of sources including the sun as well as the breakdown of radioactive minerals found naturally in rock and soil.
However, the application to renew the licence, which includes public hearings, is one of the first opportunities many residents will have to ask questions after finding out in 2012 from a Star story that the plant — owned by GE-Hitachi until December of 2016 — was making pellets.
[read more]
The story was the result of activist Zach Ruiter, a freelance journalist and Trent University graduate, who knocked on doors to alert residents that the plant existed. Ruiter said he felt there was a lack of public awareness and not enough public consultation by the CNSC.
At that time, signs on buildings at the Toronto plant simply said the company’s name — there was no indication that it was a nuclear facility.
The CNSC required GE-Hitachi to have an outreach program, but most community members didn’t know what the plant manufactured despite its presence in the neighbourhood since 1965.
Now, nearly 250 individuals and organizations have registered to intervene either as speakers or in writing during hearings in March, when the commission will hold two-day public sessions in Toronto as well as Peterborough, where BWXT owns another former GE-Hitachi plant. The Peterborough plant consolidates the pellets into fuel bundles for Ontario Power Generation’s Pickering and Darlington nuclear generating stations.
The licence renewal, which CNSC staff have recommended be approved, is for both plants.
“From the CNSC staff perspective, there are no risks,” said Caroline Ducros, director of the safety commission’s nuclear processing facilities division. “The quantities (of uranium) that are leaving the (Toronto) plant are negligible.”
Despite the assurance, Muir said he didn’t feel confident after leaving the CNSC’s public information meeting.
There were a number of unanswered questions, he said, including what happens if the tank full of highly flammable liquid hydrogen — the pellets are baked in a furnace filled with hydrogen — catches fire? What’s the blast radius? Or the company’s emergency plan?
The company says it has an internal emergency response plan for both sites, with guidelines for emergency staff and plant personnel, which is sent to the CNSC.
And that “each BWXT facility has established emergency prevention programs to minimize the risk of fires and other hazardous events, as well as robust response plans that prescribe the actions to be taken to prevent or minimize potential health and environmental hazards,” wrote Natalie Cutler, BWXT’s director of communications and government relations, in an email.
Muir also wondered why, with such an increase in public interest, so few residents knew about the CNSC information meeting, where commission staff and experts, together with BWXT employees, anti-nuclear activists and politicians seemed to outnumber the 15 or so people from the community.
Kevin Lee, a senior regulatory policy officer at the CNSC, which employs 900 staff, said the commission couldn’t afford to notify the public by advertising in newspapers because it was too expensive. The organization relies on social media.
BWXT’s application is not only generating opposition in Toronto, but in Peterborough because of a provision in the new licence that would allow BWXT to move its Toronto pelleting operation anytime during its 10-year period to Peterborough.
Activists there say they are tired of dealing with the legacy waste from the GE-Hitachi plant, which used PCBs, asbestos as well as other chemicals at the Peterborough location, although in manufacturing operations that were unrelated to the nuclear fuel bundling division bought by BWXT.
At its height in the ’60s, the GE plant in Peterborough employed 6,000 people. But the numbers steadily decreased and in 2017 the company laid off 350 employees in its large motor division, where it made motors for cruise ship propellers or to pump oil, among other things. About 50 employees remained in engineering and sales.
“It’s just worrying because there’s alway accidents and fugitive emissions whenever there’s a factory,” said Jane Scott, who became aware of GE’s nuclear division in Peterborough about 10 years ago when her children were students at nearby Prince of Wales elementary school.
“I thought what the heck is a nuclear facility doing across from the school,” Scott said.
Scott co-founded Peterborough’s Citizens Against Radioactive Neighbourhoods (CARN) in April of last year after hearing that BWXT might move the pelleting operation to Peterborough.
“Extreme events happen and people make mistakes, as BWXT has in the past. And GE before that,” Scott said. “So it’s just a no-brainer that this should not be in the heart of our downtown.”
Scott was referring to an incident at BWXT in Peterborough where two workers wore the wrong respirator filters 15 times over a two-year period, from 2015 to 2017, exposing them to airborne beryllium, a highly toxic metal used to join parts of fuel bundles together.
“These employees were assessed and have been returned to normal duties,” said Cutler in an email. “There was no off-site exposure or release of beryllium, and there was no health or safety risk posed to the public or environment.”
In Toronto, Julie Dzerowicz, MP for the Davenport riding, said she has consulted a number of people about the BWXT pelleting plant on Lansdowne and has not heard any information that makes her think it’s a danger.
Canadians typically receive a 1.8 millisievert dose a year of background radiation, which is found naturally in the air, soil, rocks, water, plants and food, according to the CNSC. We are exposed to higher doses when we have x-rays or diagnostic imaging.
The CNSC said the annual public dose from the Toronto plant in 2018 was 0.0004 millisieverts and that epidemiological studies show there are no adverse health effects for any dose below 100 millisieverts.
Dzerowicz said if anyone presents her with evidence that shows she should be concerned for the health and safety of Davenport residents, she “will take urgent and immediate action.”
However, Dzerowicz was adamant residents in her riding be allowed to ask their own questions and requested the CNSC hold hearings in her riding, as opposed to the original location — a hotel near the Yorkdale Shopping Centre where the commission planned to simulcast proceedings from a physical location in Peterborough.
The CNSC complied and the Toronto hearings on March 2 and 3 will be held at Casa do Alentejo at 1130 Dupont St., where Dzerowicz plans to speak as an intervener.
“I’d like to represent what I’ve been hearing from Davenport residents,” she said.
Those concerns include more transparency regarding test results of air and soil samples, more safety audits of the plant by the CNSC and information about the company’s emergency plan.
BWXT does in-stack air monitoring every day and according to the company’s website, the sample results are verified by an independent laboratory. At the perimeter of the plant, five monitoring stations draw air into a filter and the amount of uranium dioxide captured by the filter is analyzed by a third-party lab.
Soil sampling is done less often — once a year by BWXT and about once every two years by the CNSC — because there has been little change in the concentration of uranium over time, said BWXT president John MacQuarrie.
Wastewater used in the plant to clean floors, equipment and protective clothing is held in storage tanks and treated to remove as much uranium dioxide as possible before it is released into the city’s sewage system.
“We all get radiation in our daily lives. And what our plant contributes to that is insignificant,” MacQuarrie said. “And we operate well below what the regulators consider as safe … And so we’re quite confident, after many years of the business being operated, that it’s a highly safe operation.”
According to company reports, from 2014 to 2018 BWXT emitted 46.2 grams of uranium dioxide into the air and 3.6 kilograms into the city’s wastewater, levels that are far below the allowable air emissions of 760 grams and water emissions of 9,000 kilograms per year. (The charitable organization Lake Ontario Waterkeeper has entered a submission recommending, among things, that what it calls “absurdly high” annual release limits be reduced.)
Among the experts Dzerowicz consulted was Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, who is contributing to a submission by the Canadian Environmental Law Association, which is intervening at the hearings on behalf of CARN.
Edwards is a former professor of math and science at Montreal’s Vanier College and has done consulting in the past on nuclear issues for government and industry.
He said studies about the effects of exposure to uranium dioxide have been largely inconclusive, mainly because there are few populations that have been exposed to breathing in the powder.
But he said the BWXT plant in Toronto is giving off “a small but significant” amount of radioactive heavy metal powder into the air that if inhaled could go deep into lung tissue and radiate a cell so that over time it could develop into cancer. He said it could take 20 years for any negative effects to appear because uranium releases its radioactive particles very slowly.
“In the case of Peterborough, there is an elementary school right across the street. And the outdoor playground faces onto the BWXT company just across the street,” possibly exposing kids to the powder for years if the pelleting operation is moved there, he said.
“I’m not saying they’re all going to get cancer. They’re not,” Edwards said. “But some of them could very well get cancer. So it’s a life-threatening situation for those few individuals who might suffer the consequences.”
BWXT says emissions from the Toronto facility are about one per cent of the regulatory limit and do not cause any health impacts to the public or the environment.
A group of scientists who live near the Peterborough fuel-bundling plant are also worried about beryllium.
In a letter to the Examiner newspaper, they expressed concern that recent testing by the CNSC showed concentrations of beryllium in local soil samples had increased since 2014.
“The clear increase of Be in soil samples is likely being driven by significant increases in air concentrations, which is particularly worrying because beryllium can be toxic if inhaled,” reads the letter. “More worryingly, the highest values of beryllium in 2019 were found in the samples in the Prince of Wales school.
“Although none of these samples have reached the threshold at which intervention is mandated, the increase alone mandates intervention and further evaluation to ascertain the source.”
Answers to whether that will happen, as well as other questions, may have to wait until commission hearings in March.
A spokesperson for the CNSC said in an email that questions about where the escaping uranium dioxide goes, what the health effects are or details about the emergency plan will have to wait until then.
“Since the Commission is a quasi-judicial administrative tribunal and currently seized with the matter of BWXT licence renewal, the Commission and CNSC staff cannot further address your followup questions,” according to the email, “as these are about substantive issues that are expected to be dealt with in the context of the upcoming hearing.”
Meanwhile, BWXT says it has no immediate plans to consolidate pellet making and fuel bundling in Peterborough.
But Dzerowicz thinks the company will move the operation from her Toronto riding in the next five years.
“What I would say to you is that over time, and my preference is sooner than later, I would love to see the uranium pelleting out of the riding and out of the city to a different location,” said Dzerowicz, explaining that given land values, it’s only natural the plant would move out to allow more housing.
“I’m not suggesting they move to Peterborough,” Dzerowicz said. “I think it needs to be in a safe area.”
[/read]
Will someone update us on the outcome of this dispute? Has it been settled yet?
Ontario’s Disposal Problem
Here is Dr. Edwards statement — which was sent to the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR) mailing list on 1 February 2020:
“The Saugeen Ojibway Nation (SON) has voted against Ontario Power Generation’s Deep Geological Disposal (DGR) project, planned to house all of Ontario’s Low and Intermediate Level Waste at a site within a mile of the northwestern shore of Lake Huron.
To prevent confusion: there are two DGR (Deep Geological Disposal) Projects that have been under consideration in Ontario in recent years.
One DGR is for all of Canada’s irradiated nuclear fuel (called “High :Level Waste (HLW)”). That project is under the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) acting under the authority of Canada’s Nuclear Fuel Waste Act.
The NWMO site selection process has recently (late 2019) narrowed from 22 candidate sites (potential “willing host communities”) to 3 sites. One of the remaining three candidate sites is at Ignace, north of Lake Superior not far from the border between Ontario and Manitoba; the other two candidate sites are quite close to the Bruce Nuclear Power Station right beside Lake Huron. (See the photo of Bruce.) The process for finding a home for Canada’s HLW is still in its early stages even though it has been going on for decades — over 20 years under NWMO, and over 20 years before that under AECL, Ontario Power and the Seaborn Panel.
[read more]
The following article has to do with another DGR project, completely different from the first. It is a separate facility proposed by Ontario Power Generations (OPG, a provincial crown corporation that owns all of Ontario’s nuclear power reactors). The OPG DGR is NOT intended for high level waste (HLW), but for storing Ontario’s low level radioactive waste (LLW) and intermediate level radioactive waste (ILW), from all of Ontario’s nuclear reactors — with the exception of “decommissioning waste”, for which there is at present no designated approach. The OPG DGR was intended for a precise selected site close to Lake Huron, not far from Kincardine Ontario, which is also in the vicinity of the Bruce Nuclear Power Plant.
The OPG DGR project — intended for Ontario’s Low and Intermediate Level Wastes (LILW) — was given a green light by an Environmental Review Panel that held public meetings on the matter, but the federal government has delayed giving its approval for various reasons — and that approval is necessary before the project can proceed. In recent months, the major remaining stumbling block has been the lack of explicit permission from the Saugueen Ojibway Nation (SON) on whose unceded territory the OPG DGR would be located. Ontario Power Generation has pledged repeatedly that the project will not proceed without the approval of SON, and the federal government has been awaiting word from the SON.
SON has now spoken. The answer is “No”. There will be no implementation of the OPG DGR project at the site beside Lake Huron that was selected for that purpose.
However, the OPG project for LILW has no direct bearing on the first DGR project for HLW that was described in the opening paragraph above. NWMO will continue to search for a willing host community to build a DGR to house all of Canada’s irradiated nuclear fuel, including two candidate sites in the same general neighbourhood as the OPG DGR project which has now been rejected.
The nuclear waste issue is nothing if not complicated! And the Age of Nuclear Waste is just beginning….”
For context, this statement was in response to this media article:
Title: Saugeen Ojibway Nation Votes No on DGR
Author: CNW Group
Date: 31 January 2020
Publication: Yahoo! Finance
Link: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/saugeen-ojibway-nation-votes-no-031600205.html
[/read]
The Saugeen Ojibway Say No
Saugeen Ojibway hearings about the repository
Dr. Gordon Edwards made the following statement, which was sent to the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR) mailing list on 1 February 2020:
“The Saugeen Ojibway Nation (SON) has voted against Ontario Power Generation’s Deep Geological Disposal (DGR) project, planned to house all of Ontario’s Low and Intermediate Level Waste at a site within a mile of the northwestern shore of Lake Huron.
To prevent confusion: there are two DGR (Deep Geological Disposal) Projects that have been under consideration in Ontario in recent years.
One DGR is for all of Canada’s irradiated nuclear fuel (called “High :Level Waste (HLW)”). That project is under the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) acting under the authority of Canada’s Nuclear Fuel Waste Act.
[read more]
The NWMO site selection process has recently (late 2019) narrowed from 22 candidate sites (potential “willing host communities”) to 3 sites. One of the remaining three candidate sites is at Ignace, north of Lake Superior not far from the border between Ontario and Manitoba; the other two candidate sites are quite close to the Bruce Nuclear Power Station right beside Lake Huron. The process for finding a home for Canada’s HLW is still in its early stages even though it has been going on for decades — over 20 years under NWMO, and over 20 years before that under AECL, Ontario Power and the Seaborn Panel.
The following article has to do with another DGR project, completely different from the first. It is a separate facility proposed by Ontario Power Generations (OPG, a provincial crown corporation that owns all of Ontario’s nuclear power reactors). The OPG DGR is NOT intended for high level waste (HLW), but for storing Ontario’s low level radioactive waste (LLW) and intermediate level radioactive waste (ILW), from all of Ontario’s nuclear reactors — with the exception of “decommissioning waste”, for which there is at present no designated approach. The OPG DGR was intended for a precise selected site close to Lake Huron, not far from Kincardine Ontario, which is also in the vicinity of the Bruce Nuclear Power Plant.
The OPG DGR project — intended for Ontario’s Low and Intermediate Level Wastes (LILW) — was given a green light by an Environmental Review Panel that held public meetings on the matter, but the federal government has delayed giving its approval for various reasons — and that approval is necessary before the project can proceed. In recent months, the major remaining stumbling block has been the lack of explicit permission from the Saugueen Ojibway Nation (SON) on whose unceded territory the OPG DGR would be located. Ontario Power Generation has pledged repeatedly that the project will not proceed without the approval of SON, and the federal government has been awaiting word from the SON.
SON has now spoken. The answer is “No”. There will be no implementation of the OPG DGR project at the site beside Lake Huron that was selected for that purpose.
However, the OPG project for LILW has no direct bearing on the first DGR project for HLW that was described in the opening paragraph above. NWMO will continue to search for a willing host community to build a DGR to house all of Canada’s irradiated nuclear fuel, including two candidate sites in the same general neighbourhood as the OPG DGR project which has now been rejected.
The nuclear waste issue is nothing if not complicated! And the Age of Nuclear Waste is just beginning….”
For context, this statement was in response to this media article:
Title: Saugeen Ojibway Nation Votes No on DGR
Author: CNW Group
Date: 31 January 2020
Publication: Yahoo! Finance
Link: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/saugeen-ojibway-nation-votes-no-031600205.html
[/read]
Energy Under our Feet: Geothermal!
“How A Climate Change Nonprofit Got Eversource Thinking About A Geothermal Future”
by Bruce Gellerman
Article Excerpt:
Natural gas utilities in Massachusetts are facing an existential crisis: they could be out of business by mid-century. That’s because the state’s 2008 Global Warming Solutions Act requires emissions from burning fossil fuels — like natural gas — be cut by 80% economy-wide by 2050.
But now a solution that could help save the companies — and the climate — is at hand. Or, more accurately, underfoot. It’s geothermal energy, which takes advantage of the biggest energy storage system on earth: the earth itself.
[read more]
Our planet absorbs the sun’s solar energy and stores it underground as thermal energy that can be used to heat and cool homes and businesses. Just a few yards down, the earth’s temperature is a constant 50 to 60 degrees; warmer than the air above during winter, cooler in the summer. You can take advantage of the temperature difference using what is called a geothermal or ground source heat pump: plastic pipes filled with water and antifreeze pick up the heat from the ground, and the pump circulates it through a building.
The technology, developed in the late 1940s, does away with furnaces, air conditioners and hot water heaters, and is the most efficient way to heat and cool a building. While it’s widespread in some countries, like Sweden, it’s been slow to catch on here.
“The site has to be appropriate,” said architect Lisa Cunningham, who recently designed a gut renovation of a private Brookline home using geothermal energy. The best sites for geothermal systems have lots of space to install horizontal pipes in relatively shallow ground. But because the Brookline lot is so small, workers had to drill two holes 500 feet deep.
“One thing that’s so great about having a project like this right in the heart of a very dense town, we’re showing people it can be very cost-effective,” Cunningham said, adding that the cost for installing the system in the Brookline home “came in less than a comparable gas system.”
But that includes thousands of dollars in state rebates and federal tax incentives that are expiring. Cost is still a big hurdle, said Zeyneb Magavi, co-executive director of Home Energy Efficiency Team (HEET), a Cambridge-based environmental nonprofit.
“Geothermal ground source heating has been around a long time, and it has usually been installed one house by one house individually,” she said. “It works. However, it is a fairly high up-front cost, and you have to have the means and motivation to be able to do it.”
Magavi, a clean energy advocate, said she asked herself: Who already digs holes and puts pipes in the ground, has big money and is motivated to find a new business model? Her answer: natural gas distribution companies.
Magavi was familiar with the gas utilities through her work — along with HEET co-executive director Audrey Schulman and the Gas Leaks Allies — helping gas companies identify leaky pipes most in need of repair.
Together, they found it would cost $9 billion over 20 years to fix the aging infrastructure. Magavi suggested they use for money to transform the industry instead.
“The idea is that a gas utility takes out its leaky gas pipe and, instead of putting in new gas pipe, we put in a hot water loop,” Magavi said. “If we’re going to invest in infrastructure, let’s invest in infrastructure for the next century. Let’s not invest in infrastructure that was hot in 1850.”
HEET commissioned a study to investigate if there were a way to make geothermal energy appealing to both utilities and environmentalists.
“We wanted something that was renewable, resilient, reliable, kept gas workers in jobs, [was] equal or lower cost than gas, and safe and doable,” Magavi said. She found that “networking” — connecting geothermal systems to many homes and businesses — ticked all of the boxes.
“The beautiful thing is that when you interconnect them, the more customers you put on the system, the more efficient it gets,” Magavi said.
Magavi showed the results to senior officials with Eversource, the largest energy delivery company in New England.
It was an unusual pitch, but she felt that “they also understood that we were approaching this always from a data- and fact-based conversation, and they took us very seriously,” Magavi said.
Eversource Senior Vice President and Chief Customer Officer Penni Conner said the company likes the idea.
“This looks a lot like the gas business that we’re in except it’s totally clean,” Conner said. “Eversource can bring the capital and the expertise to this. We know how to build infrastructure.”
Eversource conducted its own study of networked geothermal heat pump systems, leading it to propose three different pilot projects to Massachusetts regulators in order to prove that the networked systems are feasible.
Under a networked system, homes and businesses would own the geothermal heat pumps, while Eversource would own and manage the system of pipes, sensors and pressure regulators, Conner said. That would convert the gas utility into a networked, thermal management company.
“Maybe I have a laundromat that has a lot of heat load, maybe it’s working a lot in the evening,” Conner said. “So they are leveraging putting heat back into the system potentially in the evening when others need it for cooling. So you get that benefit.”
State regulators are now reviewing Eversources’s proposals for networked pilot projects, and could give the go-ahead within a year.
“I think we can move fast,” Magavi said. “My vision of the future is that we have wires delivering us renewable energy competing with pipes delivering us renewable energy. So thermal power and electric power grids, and the two benefit each other.”
Geothermal energy heating our homes, with pumps powered by solar- and wind-generated electricity. If this unusual collaboration between a natural gas utility and an environmental organization pays off, a clean energy future could be right under our feet.
[/read]
No Batteries Required
Geriatric reactors
An alarming article from the Erie, Pennsylvania-based Go Erie news outlet on the plans to extend the operation license of Turkey Point Nuclear Power Plant in Homestead, Florida. The plant would not be decommissioned and/or shut down until it was 80 years old -significantly past its safe operating period. There is concern that this may lay a dangerous precedent for extending the operating licenses of other nuclear power plants beyond safe parameters and/or limit research interest into other, more environmentally friendly and sustainable energy systems.
[read more]
It is alarming to hear the nearby residents in the article say nuclear is clean power – given the fact that no country on Earth has a feasible plan for the long-term storage of dangerous nuclear and radioactive waste products. Most of these products sit in storage facilities near to the reactors themselves.
[read more]
Title: Our Aging Nuclear Power Plants
Author: Ari Natter
Date: 9 February 2020
Publication: Go Erie
Link: https://www.goerie.com/business/20200209/our-aging-nuclear-plants
Text:
Utilities nationwide are preparing to follow suit, seeking permission to extend the life of reactors built in the 1970s to the 2050s.
Bonnie Rippingille looked out at the wisps of steam curling from the Turkey Point Nuclear Power Plant across Biscayne Bay with a sense of dread. In December federal regulators approved Florida Power & Light Co.’s request to let the facility’s twin nuclear reactions remain in operation for another 20 years beyond the end of their current licenses. By that point they’ll be 80, making them the oldest reactors in operation anywhere in the world.
“That’s too old,” said Rippingille, a lawyer and retired Miami-Dade County judge. “They weren’t designed for this purpose.”
With backing from the Trump administration, utilities nationwide are preparing to follow suit, seeking permission to extend the life of reactors built in the 1970s to the 2050s as they run up against the end of their 60-year licenses.
“We are talking about running machines that were designed in the 1960s, constructed in the 1970s and have been operating under the most extreme radioactive and thermal conditions imaginable,” said Damon Moglen, an official with the environmental group Friends of the Earth. “There is no other country in the world that is thinking about operating reactors in the 60 to 80-year time frame.”
Indeed, the move comes as other nations shift away from atomic power over safety concerns, despite its appeal as a carbon-free alternative to coal and other fossil fuels. Japan, which used to get more than a quarter of its electricity from nuclear power, shut down all its plants in 2011 after a tsunami caused a nuclear meltdown at three reactors in Fukushima. Only a handful have restarted while others that can’t meet stringent new standards are slated to close permanently. Germany decided that year to shutter its entire fleet by 2022 and is now having trouble meeting its ambitious climate goals.
By contrast, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is poised to decide this year on requests by subsidiaries of Exelon Corp. to extend the life of two nuclear reactors at its Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania and Dominion Energy Inc. to extend the life of two nuclear reactors at a power plant in Surry, Virginia.
Dominion has notified the commission it intends to ask permission to extend the life of two more reactors north of Richmond, Virginia. Duke Energy Corp. has said it plans to seek license extensions for its entire fleet of 11 nuclear reactors, starting with three in Seneca, South Carolina.
“There are economic benefits,” said Rounette Nader, Duke’s director of nuclear license renewal. “Continuing to operate our existing nuclear fleet is cheaper than replacing it.”
The nuclear industry has been buffeted by a wave of early reactor retirements in the face of competition from cheap natural gas and subsidized renewable power. Constructing a new nuclear plant – the only one being built in the U.S. is years behind schedule and over budget – can cost billions of dollars. Retrofitting an existing one is more likely to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars range.
“It just makes sense,” said Maria Korsnick, president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, a Washington-based trade group that represents nuclear utilities. “I don’t think you should look at a plant just on calendar years, but rather the way that plant has been maintained, so many components have been replaced over the years. There is nothing magic about 80.”
Opponents such as Edward Lyman, a nuclear energy expert with the Union of Concerned Scientists, argue that older plants contain “structures that can’t be replaced or repaired,” including the garage-sized steel reactor vessels that contain tons of nuclear fuel and can grow brittle after years of being bombarded by radioactive neutrons. “They just get older and older,” he said. If the vessel gets brittle, it becomes vulnerable to cracking or even catastrophic failure.
Other concerns surround the durability of components such as concrete and electric cables, but an advisory board to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the independent government agency that gave Turkey Point the green light to operate into the 2050s, said those risks could be managed safely.
The commission’s decision doesn’t sit well with Philip Stoddard, mayor of South Miami, a city of 13,000 on about 18 miles away from the Turkey Point plant. He keeps a store of potassium iodide, used to prevent thyroid cancer, large enough to provide for every child in his city should the need arise.
“You’ve got hurricanes, you’ve got storm surge, you’ve got increasing risks of hurricanes and storm surge,” said Stoddard, 62. All of this not only increases the likelihood of a nuclear disaster, it also complicates a potential evacuation, which could put even more lives at risk.
Gabriel Ignetti, a 72-year-old Miami resident and retired music teacher, views nuclear power as a lesser evil than climate change and welcomes extending the life of the plant. “We have a climate emergency,” he said, “and if you have a climate emergency you can’t say we are not going to use that tool.”
That’s a point backers also highlight to make the case for extending the lives of nuclear power plants. Nuclear energy provides about 20 percent of the nation’s electricity and about 55% of the nation’s carbon-free energy.
Climate change is also one of the main cases against extending the life of Turkey Point, said Kelly Cox, the general counsel for Miami Waterkeeper, an environmental group that is challenging the NRC’s approval in federal court. New data show sea level rise in the area reach as high as 4.5 feet by 2070, but regulators from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission didn’t take those updated figures into account, Cox. said.
“They are going to be flooded,” Cox said. “If we are relicensing a major utility we need to be preparing for the impacts of sea level rise.”
Scott Burnell, a NRC spokesman, said the agency’s review process did take into account the most recent information available on sea level rise, but that “the projected rate of sea level rise and associated revisions in flood hazard are slow enough that the plants will have ample time to appropriately analyze and address possible future effects.”
Peter Robbins, a spokesman for Florida Power & Light Co. said the utility is addressing that problem using a series of pumps to decrease the salinity in the cooling canals. The main power plant and its critical component are elevated 20 feet above sea level and are protected by concrete and reinforced buildings designed to withstand hurricanes and floods.
“At the end of the day it’s a very clean, reliable source of electricity,” Robbins said. “More than anything we think this is a win for our customers. It helps keep their bills low, and there are no greenhouse gases as part of nuclear.”
In the city of Homestead, not far from the Turkey Point plant, Brian Goodwin, a 52-year-old farmer, said he supports the reactors’ extension. “I hope they build another one,” said Goodwin. “It’s good clean power.”
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Recalling the Old Job at Chernobyl
Check out this interesting interview (by Quick Take (Bloomberg)) which discusses Chernobyl with a former employee and liquidator of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlVV3pgH3ac
Cleaning up the place
H-Canyon at SRS poses ‘maintenance challenge,’ DOE cleanup chief says
By Colin Demarest
Aiken Standard, 15 April 2019
This article pertains to the H-Canyon site of Savannah River – which from my understanding was a hydrogen bomb and plutonium production facility during the Cold War. More recently, it is used as a nuclear chemical separation plant.
“White’s H-Canyon comments came as a response to U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., who questioned her last week during a House Armed Services Committee hearing. The hearing focused on President Donald Trump’s fiscal year 2020 budget request.
Trump’s request, a goal-setting document for all intents and purposes, includes about $1.6 billion for Environmental Management work at SRS.
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H-Canyon was constructed in the early 1950s and began operations in 1955.
The aging facility – 1,028 feet long, 122 feet wide and 71 feet tall – is the nation’s only up-and-running hardened nuclear chemical separations plant.
White last week described H-Canyon as an “extremely important facility to the United States” and as a “very precious resource.”
Wilson agreed, describing it as “just so critical for our country.”
The article goes on to discuss the plant needs repairs and upgrades, such as roof maintenance, and technology upgrades.
Link: https://www.aikenstandard.com/news/h-canyon-at-srs-poses-maintenance-challenge-doe-cleanup-chief/article_ecff0374-5f88-11e9-b58a-6b22c18d785d.html
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Storing Waste on Lake Huron?
First Nations support alternative plans for storing nuclear waste. Previous plans indicated storage sites along the shore of Lake Huron would be used. What these new plans – and whether they are more environmentally friendly – have yet to be determined.
Sault Tribe lauds decision to abandon plan to store nuclear waste near Lake Huron
“The Sault Tribe, along with the rest of the tribes in Michigan, is pleased to see Ontario Power Generation give up on this terrible idea to build a nuclear waste storage site on the shores of the Great Lakes,” Payment said. “Since 2017, the tribes in Michigan have supported our relatives in the Saugeen Ojibway Nation in their concerns over this proposal. In addition, any threat to the Lake Huron fishery that is posed by disposal of nuclear waste so close to the Great Lakes is of deep concern to us all.”
Link: https://www.sootoday.com/sault-michigan/sault-tribe-lauds-decision-to-abandon-plan-to-store-nuclear-waste-on-lake-huron-2068256
No way!
The Ojibway have said no to a proposal to bury low-level waste on their land. What is Plan B?
Is this plan C?
By Jim Bloch For MediaNews Group Jul 16, 2020
Employees of Western Waste Management and Ontario Power Generation in 2016 display core samples of the geology that underlies the Bruce nuclear station and the surrounding areas. Jim Bloch — For MediaNews Group
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization, the industry group tasked in 2002 with finding a permanent waste site for Canadian high-level nuclear waste, announced earlier this year that it had landed on two possible locations, down from 22 prospective sites — Ignace in northwest Ontario and the municipality of South Bruce, virtually next door to the now scrapped site for low and intermediate nuclear waste storage.
“High-level radioactive waste in Canada is used (irradiated) nuclear fuel that has been declared as radioactive waste. Used nuclear fuel produces ionizing radiation,” according to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. “This type of radiation has a strong ability to penetrate matter, so shielding against the radiation is required. Since used nuclear fuel contains significant quantities of radionuclides with long half-lives, it requires long-term management and isolation.”
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Low and intermediate nuclear waste refers to all other forms of nuclear waste.
Calling any kind of radioactive waste “low level” is somewhat inaccurate, according to Diane D’Arrigo, the radioactive waste project director at the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, headquartered in Tacoma Park, Maryland.
“A lot of what’s in that waste might be low level, but it’s not low risk,” said D’Arrigo.
Both can contain the same dangerous radioactive elements.
Like the scrapped plan, the new effort calls for a deep geological repository. The effort relies on core samples from the shelved DGR to demonstrate the ostensible suitability of the site.
“In Huron-Kinloss and South Bruce, detailed assessment of available historic local and regional geo-scientific studies, including recent deep borehole data from the Bruce nuclear site, showed that the geological setting has a number of favourable characteristics for hosting a deep geological repository for used nuclear fuel,” according to information on the NWMO website.
OPG proposed to excavate a storage chamber in a layer of limestone 2,200 feet underground, capped by shale on the top and granite below; OPG geologists estimated that the rock had been stable for 450 million years. The proposed site would be about 600 feet less deep.
The members and financiers — via dedicated trust funds — of the NWMO are Ontario Power Generation, New Brunswick Power, Hydro-Québec and Atomic Energy of Canada Limited.
Huron-Kinloss, which neighbors South Bruce, is no longer under consideration for the dump. South Bruce sits 29 miles southeast of Bruce Power nuclear station and about 20 miles east of Lake Huron. The DGR proposed for the Bruce Power site, home to eight reactors, was a half mile from Lake Huron.
The nuclear complex is on the shore of Lake Huron, roughly 125 miles uplake of Port Huron and 150 miles uplake and upstream from Algonac.
The new high-level waste dump would accept spent fuel rods from the 18 nuclear reactors in Ontario and the single reactor at Point Lepreau, New Brunswick.
Like the previously proposed dump, the high-level dump is within the Great Lakes basin, inland from Kincardine, said Emily Grant, a South Bruce activist opposed to the project, via email. Grant is a member of the group Protect Our Waterways – No Nuclear Waste.
NWMO optioned about 1,300 acres of land in January and “the site will lie directly below the Teeswater River, a tributary of Lake Huron,” said Grant. “As you know, the Great Lakes provide drinking water to over 30 million Americans and 10 million Canadians … There isn’t a single DGR that houses high-level radioactive material in the world, and this experiment does not belong anywhere near the world’s largest body of freshwater.”
The Teeswater River flows generally north and joins the Saugeen River in Paisley, which then runs northwest and flows into Lake Huron at Southampton, 19 miles north of the Bruce Power nuclear station.
“Spent fuel is thermally hot as well as highly radioactive and requires remote handling and shielding,” according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Three of the byproducts of the fission process used to generate nuclear power remain dangerous for long periods of time. “Strontium-90 and cesium-137 have half-lives of about 30 years (half the radioactivity will decay in 30 years). Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,000 years.”
Strontium-90 acts like calcium in the body, seeking out bones, where it can cause cancer; cesium-137 is a muscle seeker; plutonium-239 ends up in the bones, liver and spleen. “Some can give a lethal dose in 15-20 minutes unshielded,” D’Arrigo said.
There is no level at which human exposure to radiation has been deemed safe.
High-level nuclear waste will remain toxic for more than 100,000 years, ten times longer than the Great Lakes are old, and some of it for more than a million years.
NWMO acknowledges this potential problem.
“There is some uncertainty about how the system will perform over the very long term because we cannot obtain advance proof of actual performance over thousands of years,” says the organization.
Protect Our Waterways – No Nuclear Waste announced on July 3 that it had hired environmental lawyer David Donnelly to help fight the repository.
Right now, reactor operators are required to store high-level nuclear waste onsite. According to the Detroit Free Press in a December story, nearly 60,000 tons of spent fuel is parked at reactors that dot the shores of the Great Lakes in the U.S. and Canada. Nearly 3,000 spend fuel bundles await permanent interment in Canada.
According to the NWMO’s prospective timeline, a final site will be chosen by 2023 and construction will begin in 2033. Ten years later, after costs of at least $23 billion, the dump will be in operation, accepting high-level waste for 50 years. Over the course of its construction and operating life, more than 2,000 people will be employed. The repository would be sealed and monitored for a certain amount of time and then essentially abandoned.
Like the proposed dump for low and intermediate level nuclear waste, the NWMO says that the high-level dump will not go forward without the approval of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation, on whose historic lands the DGR will sit.
“I would imagine that we will not allow high-level waste to be buried within our territory either, because that was the big fear with the last project, that high-level waste would go into it,” Vernon Roote, a former chief with the Saugeen First Nation, told CTV News London in March.
Eighty-six percent of the first nation voted against the low and intermediate nuclear waste dump, 1,058-170, in January.
Jim Bloch is a freelance writer. Contact him at bloch.jim@gmail.com.
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Russia’s Arctic Nuclear Dump May Become Promising Fishing Area
“Thousands of containers with radioactive waste were dumped in the Kara Sea during Soviet times. Now, Russia’s Federal Agency for Fishing believes it’s a good idea to start fishing.
[…]
“17 ships and barges loaded with radioactive waste are dumped here. So are 17,000 containers with radioactive waste. Even worse, along the east coast of Novaya Zemlya is 16 nuclear reactors dumped, six of them with spent uranium fuel still on board. ”
[…]
According to Sergey Gulovanov (Head of the Science and Education Department with the Federal Agency for Fisheries) the Kara Sea’s advantage for the fishing industry is that it is a shelf sea, it does not border any territorial waters of other nations. “This is why Russia can have own fishing regulations there,” he said according to TASS. ”
[…]
“Sergey Golovanov says fishing for rare species could be promising. Also halibut is living in the Kara Sea and the waters are rich on polar cod, capelin, in flounder, perch and snow crab. “We forecast a possible growth of crab, like it was in the Barents Sea,” Golovanov said.
At the conference in Murmansk, nothing was said about the Kara Sea being the main dumping ground for nuclear waste during Soviet times. No other oceans worldwide have more dumped radioactive waste than Russia’s Arctic Kara Sea.”
Link: https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/ecology/2018/03/russias-arctic-nuclear-dump-may-become-promising-fishing-area. Thomas Nilson, The Barents Observer [15 March 2018]:
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There’s Waste in Australia too!
Transporting nuclear wastes across Australia in the age of bushfires (8 January 2020)
Excerpt: “The radiological risks associated with the transportation of spent fuel and high-level waste are well understood and are generally low, with the possible exception of risks from releases in extreme accidents involving very long duration, fully engulfing fires. While the likelihood of such extreme accidents appears to be very small, their occurrence cannot be ruled out.
Transportation planners and managers should undertake detailed surveys of transportation routes to identify potential hazards that could lead to or exacerbate extreme accidents involving very long duration, fully engulfing fires.”
And There are Fires in Russia too!
Link: https://www.americansecurityproject.org/thinking-the-unthinkable-fires-in-russia-fan-nuclear-fears/
Thinking the Unthinkable: Fires in Russia Fan Nuclear Fears (11 August 2010)
“The United States has spent hundreds of millions of dollars and years of effort to help Russia secure its nuclear stockpiles from what is euphemistically referred to as “diversion.” But the 600 wildfires raging across the Russian countryside spotlight another risk to the nuclear-industrial complex: natural disaster.
Add to the flaming peat and forest infernos, the acrid city smog and the scorched village dwellings the specter of an atomic explosion or plumes of unseen radiation. “It demonstrates that terrorists are not the only threat against Russian nuclear weapons,” Hans Kristensen, a nuclear researcher with the Federation of American Scientists, told AOL News.
Russia’s frantic manoeuvers to protect radioactive material and weapons labs suggest that the government was caught unprepared. With a state of emergency declared in the Chelyabinsk region Tuesday, vegetation was hastily stripped from around the Mayak uranium reprocessing complex. About 700 miles away, at a major lab in Sarov, troops rushed to dig a five-mile moat. Both of these sites played major roles in the development of the first Soviet atomic bomb in 1949.
The Mayak nuclear installation
Sarov, about 220 miles east of Moscow, is one of Russia’s “secret cities” closed to outsiders. A former monastery, it was the site of Design Bureau No. 11, which carried out the production and assembly of the first Soviet bomb. The complex, then known as Arzamas-16, grew into a design center for thermonuclear weapons and is still Russia’s main nuclear research laboratory. The southern part of the grounds is thickly wooded.
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Russia’s nuclear director, Sergei Kiriyenko, has assured President Dmitry Medvedev that all radioactive materials had been spirited away from the installation, just in case. “I can guarantee that even in an extreme situation with squalling winds, there is no danger to nuclear security, no threat of radiation, explosions or environmental consequences,” he said last week.
Over the weekend, a blazing wall of fire in the area was broken down into smaller patches that could be more easily contained.
Yet the transport of that material — experts say probably by rail — exposes it to the possibility of accident or even theft, the traditional fear among security researchers. Highly enriched uranium is frequently shipped to Siberia; the Russians burn it down to a depleted state for use by U.S. nuclear power plants to produce electricity.
“But it’s not usually in a hurry, and they probably didn’t have quite the same preparation that they normally would,” Matthew Bunn, a Harvard University nuclear researcher, told AOL News. “I would certainly have concerns while it was on the road.”
Nobody has mentioned moving the fissile material at Mayak, where the plutonium for the first bomb was refined and a huge processing center for plutonium and tritium developed. “There are thousands and thousands of canisters of plutonium oxide,” Bunn said.
Several American nuclear analysts said they also worry about fire protection at the temporary storage sites where tactical nuclear weapons are often kept while in transit. These are warheads for smaller missiles and submarines, as opposed to the long-range intercontinental missiles that make up the vast majority of Russia’s nuclear arsenal. “It’s hard to say if they are threatened, because we don’t know where all of them are,” Robert S. Norris of the Natural Resources Defense Council told AOL News.
The long-range missiles, which make up the bulk of the country’s 12,000 nuclear weapons, should be safe, Kristensen said, despite the fact that they are stored deep in Russia’s dark pine forests, with the treeline in many cases just 35 feet away. The storage site Irkutsk-45, for instance, consists of five vaults near Zalari in the Transbaikal, where fires have been severe. But they lie in state at the center of underground bunkers made of concrete and steel, with perimeter chambers around them. The protection is designed to withstand a direct nuclear hit.
Still, Lt. Gen. Dirk Jameson, who served as deputy commander in chief and chief of staff of the U.S. Strategic Command, said in a statement that because the New START pact has not been ratified, the U.S. has “no on-site inspectors or other verification measures to monitor the risks to the security of Russian weapons or nuclear material” during the fires. “These risks could pose serious security implications not just for Russia but for the U.S. and for the world … that our current intelligence is unable to watch closely.”
Yet arms inspectors would not be able to examine the tactical weapons that pose the most concern; these are not covered by treaties anyway. Russia keeps very quiet about the number. But estimates peg the inventory at about 5,400 with slightly more than 2,000 operational. The U.S., by comparison, keeps approximately 500 active tactical weapons, including 200 in Europe, and an additional 700 in storage.
As if all that weren’t enough, at Mayak, where the plutonium for the first bomb was refined, another problem looms. This is a heavily contaminated area. Between 1949 and 1956, the plant directly released radionuclides into a reservoir. In 1957, there was an explosion in a tank that held high-level radioactive waste. In 1967, the wind blew radioactive material out of the dried-up bed of Lake Karachav and dispersed the particles around the community.
A 2008 study by the Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority found increased incidences of leukemia, solid cancers and birth defects among Mayak residents, which scientists linked to radiation exposure. If fire unleashes radioactive material deposited in the Mayak forests, “I would argue that the dangers to human health from fires and particulates are far higher than that from the radiation that would be stirred up,” Harvard’s Bunn said.
Experts said the same is true for the contaminated zones around Chernobyl, the nuclear power plant where a series of explosions rocked the No. 4 reactor on April 26, 1986, sending radioactive dust across Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and Europe.
Greenpeace Russia issued a statement today that three fires had been registered in the Bryanskregion, which includes Chernobyl, in forests highly polluted with the nuclear isotope cesium-137.
Andrew Sowder, a health physicist who monitored Chernobyl safety issues for the U.S. State Department, told AOL News that much of the radioactive material from the accident has decayed or become so tightly bound to the soil that it should not be easily dispersed by fire. Though he expects the health risks to be low, Sowder recommended monitoring and added that it will be important to reseed the area to keep the radioactive soil from blowing away later. “You don’t want erosion,” he said.
According to Reuters, radiation levels in Moscow today were within normal limits, said Yelena Popova, who heads the region’s monitoring center.”
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Radioactive Alligators and Ant Hills
“The animal monitoring at Savannah River and its sister sites underscores a shift in attitude within the nation’s nuclear weapons establishment.
For decades during the Cold War, workers gave little regard to the environmental consequences of the weapons operation, often dumping contaminated waste in unmarked pits with no controls to keep it from spreading into soil and groundwater.”
Animals can be good biomarkers if radiation is seeping into adjacent environments – and if so – how. The article offers several case examples, such as: radioactive alligators via contaminated wetlands at the Savannah Site in Georgia; a radioactive rabbit discovered near Hanford; a radioactive ant hill near Hanford; and radioactive deer at both sites. Resources are devoted to ensuring contaminated animals do not make it off site into areas the general public frequent.
Occasionally, officials open the Savannah River site up for the public to hunt animals. It has become very popular – requiring a lottery to get tickets to be allowed to hunt on site. The lack of general public access has resulted in some healthy and mostly undisturbed wildlife. Though – all animals that are shot are tested for radioactivity before being removed from site.
However, there are other concerning elements at the Savannah River Site, such as:
“The site has 37 million gallons of highly radioactive waste stored in 49 underground tanks, 22 of which are seen as high risks for leakage because they have just a single wall and no external liner. Several streams and ponds remain polluted with radioactive contaminants, and some of those waters also are fouled with heavy metals and toxic chemicals. A September audit by Congress’ Government Accountability Office found that just emptying the high-risk tanks will cost $1.4 billion more than the original $3.2 billion estimate, and could take years longer than anticipated.”
https://srel.uga.edu/testing-toxic-cleanups-one-gator-at-a-time/
I hear there’s a real problem with wild boars in Belarus and Poland. People like to hunt them but they are thousands of times too radioactive to eat. I wonder whether the hunters carry geiger counters with them.
It’s not just animals. Plants too. Kate Brown tells about her adventure picking blueberries in the Belarus woods with the local people. The berries are radioactive and when they sell them to a local truck, they do measure the radiation and reject any lot that is too “hot.” So the response is to combine these with some less radioactive berries to get the whole mixture under the limit, then sell them to people who will ship them off to western Europe for people to eat at breakfast!
Chernobyl Forest Litter Decomposes Slowly
Apparently, regions around the Chernobyl disaster have a decreased rate of decay – due to the radiation impeding the activity and growth of fungi, insects, and microbes. Researchers additionally noted that dead trees, leaves, and fallen tree trunks are not decomposing at the same rate – leading to increased risk of intense forest fires. There is applicability for this research for other contexts beyond Chernobyl, such as Fukushima.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/forests-around-chernobyl-arent-decaying-properly-180950075/
Dumping it in Cardboard Boxes!
Here’s a news item about the Savannah River site in South Carolina. This plant was critical to the manufacturing of the United States’ hydrogen bombs.
Some excerpts:
“That burial ground is where the plant dumped much of its solid radioactive waste at the time, often in cardboard boxes. Radioactive contamination continues to leach from burial trenches into groundwater and periodically the Savannah River despite efforts to cap the trenches and stem the leakage. Plant engineers built a dam to block most of the flow and create a large pond. […] The contaminated pond water is used as irrigation and regularly sprayed into the surrounding forest where it is absorbed by the trees and evaporates harmlessly into the atmosphere. The pond also is home to two radioactive alligators dubbed by workers as Tritagator and Dioxinator — after two of the wastes, radioactive tritium and toxic dioxin. […]
[read more]
Plant officials acknowledged that technicians occasionally ignored warning alarms and instruments because of numerous false alarms. They didn’t want to risk the costly loss of time to shut down reactors, conduct safety checks and restart. […]
For thousands of current and former workers at the bomb plant it came too late. Many had been exposed to excessive, sometimes deadly, doses of radiation during the first three decades of the plant’s operation. The congressional hearings revealed that safety took a back seat to production. […]
“But Anderson recalls an incident in 2000 when a man in her office building went to get some food at the canteen. A radiation monitor alerted on one of his shoes when he tried to enter the food area. Safety officials retraced his steps and discovered a roach he had kicked aside in a hallway. The roach was as hot from cesium-244, a radioactive isotope formerly used in a highly contaminated area of a secured lab. Plant officials cautioned workers to avoid encounters with roaches and told them to alert the radiation-control division if they saw one. Officials characterized the incident as an isolated case involving a roach that managed to creep out of the radioactive lab through some tiny crevice. The plant also studied ways to beef up pest control. Anderson believes the roach offers a sign that the entire bomb plant is radioactive and no place there is safe.”
Link: https://www.postandcourier.com/news/deadly-legacy-savannah-river-site-near-aiken-one-of-the/article_d325f494-12ff-11e7-9579-6b0721ccae53.html
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Do they seal the old uranium mines?
I have heard that Canada has had a number of uranium mines – some of which were used during the Manhattan Project. Some are still in use, though the industry has declined in recent years. The earliest mines opened in the 1930s. During the mid-twentieth century, it appears as if the standard protocol to “seal” old mines was either flooding the mine and/or boarding it up. Many of these are in remote regions – though not all. Are these “safe” ways to seal mines? Is it possible they are leaching into surrounding environments?
Uh oh. Wrong kind of cat litter
I have heard several interesting reports of types of cat litter being used in fuel storage barrels at nuclear storage repositories. Apparently, certain types of cat litter can be used to assist with containing radioactive products. NPR identifies how “cat litter has been used for years to dispose of nuclear waste. Dump it into a drum of sludge and it will stabilize volatile radioactive chemicals. The litter prevents it from reacting with the environment.” Similarly, World Nuclear News identifies “each barrel of waste disposed of at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) contains around 26 kg of cat litter to stabilize liquids and nitrate salts.”
[rad more]
An incident on 14 February 2014 unfolded at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in the USA where organic cat litter was used by accident – due to an administrative error in product ordering. Radiolytic processes caused the cellulose (the brand of cat litter was made partially of wheat products) to generate gasses, which expanded caused the barrel to explode. This is not an issue with cat litter brands that do not use these classes of wheat by-products.
This introduced radioactive materials into the ventilation system, unfortunately giving 21 workers low-level radiation exposure and shut down the plant for 1.5 years.
Newer plans from Hanford have indicated there are hopes to use forms of glass to stabilize certain radioactive materials. It is unclear if these are a safer choice than the kitty litter. Stabilizing radioactive materials can be a significant challenge in the long-term storage of these materials and products.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/05/23/315279895/organic-kitty-litter-chief-suspect-in-nuclear-waste-accident
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS-Wrong-kitty-litter-the-culript-for-WIPP-release-27030151.html
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Israeli scientists engineer bacteria to eat CO₂
Decade-long research at Weizmann Institute could pave way for low-emissions production of carbon for use in biofuels, food, and help remove excess global warming CO₂ from air
By Sue Surkes, The Times of Israel, 28 November 2019
In a remarkable breakthrough that could pave the way toward carbon-neutral fuels, researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science have produced a genetically engineered bacteria that can live on carbon dioxide rather than sugar.
The extraordinary leap — reported in Cell, and quickly picked up by prestigious publications such as Nature — could lead to the low-emissions production of carbon for use in biofuels or food that would also help to remove excess CO₂ from the atmosphere, where it is helping to drive global warming.
[read more]
Plants and ocean-living cyanobacteria perform photosynthesis, taking the energy from light to transform CO₂ into a form of organic carbon that can be used to build DNA, proteins and fats.
As these photosynthesizers can be difficult to moderate genetically, the Weizmann team, under Prof. Ron Milo, took E. coli bacteria — more commonly associated with food poisoning — and spent ten years weaning them off sugar and training them to “eat” carbon dioxide instead.
Through genetic engineering, they enabled the bacteria to convert CO₂ into organic carbon, substituting the energy of the sun — a vital ingredient in the photosynthesis process — with a substance called formate, which is also attracting attention as a potential generator of clean electricity.
To get the bacteria to move from a sugar to a carbon dioxide diet, the team, which also included Roee Ben-Nissan, Yinon Bar-On and others in the institute’s Plant and Environmental Sciences Department, then almost starved the bacteria of sugar (glucose), while giving them plenty of carbon dioxide and formate, and bred several generations to test whether evolution would allow some of the bacteria to mutate and be able to survive solely on CO₂.
After a year, some of the bacteria descendants made the complete switch to CO₂, following evolutionary changes in just 11 genes.
The lab bacteria that moved over to a CO₂ diet were fed very high amounts of the gas. However, under regular atmospheric conditions, they would still need sugar, as well, to live.
“Our lab was the first to pursue the idea of changing the diet of a normal heterotroph [one that eats organic substances] to convert it to autotrophism [‘living on air’],” said Milo. “It sounded impossible at first, but it has taught us numerous lessons along the way, and in the end we showed it indeed can be done. Our findings are a significant milestone toward our goal of efficient, green scientific applications.”
(photo E. coli bacteria. (NIAID/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0)
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I wonder whether they enjoy the taste.
Premiers are going to build small modular reactors!
I am alarmed to hear that several Canadian province’s premiers have committed to develop and promote the installation of small modular reactors in their communities. These provinces include New Brunswick, Ontario, and Saskatchewan.
Many areas in Canada have concerning trends in the management and trends of radioactive waste products – such as radioactive materials being stored only a few hundred meters from the shores of various Great Lakes (Lake Huron, Lake Ontario.). Where will the eventual waste products (spent activation products) from these small modular reactors be stored for hundreds or thousands of years post-use?
Is it worth encouraging exploration and investment in other modes of energy production? Surely New Brunswick, Ontario, and Saskatchewan have potential for hydroelectric, solar, and wind to various extents.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/group-of-premiers-band-together-to-develop-nuclear-reactor-technology-1.5380316
Supply the Terrorists?
The main reason for objecting to small nuclear reactors is that they will involve reprocessing nuclear fuel–chemically separating out the kind of material that could be used in nuclear weapons. The only thing keeping terrorists or all kinds of nasty governments from building nuclear bombs is that it is hard to get the necessary fissile materials. So do we want to make it easier for them by promoting reprocessing? No! We should ban all reprocessing immediately!
High levels of uranium in Navajo Women and Children
By Mary Hudetz, October 7, 2019.
A study by the University of New Mexico on the long-term effects of uranium exposure on Navajo women and infants revealed that a quarter of the participants still have high amounts of uranium in their systems. Up until the 1980s in New Mexico, millions of tons of uranium were mined on Native American reservations for the development of nuclear weapons. The impacts from exposure to radiation on the Navajo community still persist, as many today suffer from serious health effects such as cancer and lung problems.
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Some U.S. legislators are pressing for the U.S. government to compensate those affected by radiation and are calling out the need to clean up Uranium mines in New Mexico. The Environmental Protection Agency proposed a five-year plan to clean up abandoned uranium mines. However, the Navajo community feels as if this proposal is not urgent enough considering the serious health issues many have developed over the decades.
“U.S. Official: Research Finds Uranium in Navajo Women, Babies,” Associated Press
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Threat of Uranium Mining in the Grand Canyon
U.S. Representative Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) has proposed a bill to protect the Grand Canyon from uranium mining. Although a 20-year ban was implemented in 2012 to protect the Grand Canyon from mining, Grijalva fears the ban is no longer enough to keep out mining groups.
In 2017, President Trump declared uranium to be a key component for national security. Grijalva expects the White House’s Nuclear Fuel Working Group to recommend mining uranium near the Grand Canyon. Grijalva has thus deemed legislation necessary to protect the national park from exploitation. While many Republicans support uranium mining — a core element for the production of nuclear weapons — many Democrats are in opposition due to its destructive effects on the environment.
Geiger Counter Flower Petals?
For low-level radioactive sites – and in other applications with radiation- certain plant species can function as a supplementary radiation detector. Of interest are spiderwort plants (in the Tradecantia genus), where the stamens (the center of the flower) mutate from blue to pink in the presence of ionizing radiation. This was initially discovered in Japan in the 1970s and has been re-iterated by several media and research articles since then. It certainly does replace the importance of Geiger counters but has potential applications for sites with low-level radioactive materials – and may be useful to detect changes in ambient radiation levels. It additionally shows the change within days of exposure to low-level ionizing radiation versus the months or years it would take (in some cases) for it to show in humans, etc.
Mutant colours
It is important to note that specific cells mutate colour and it is not the whole flower – as this species of flower comes in a number of colours naturally ranging from blue to pink to purple.
Gordon Edwards shares this sombre news:
Serious concerns about Canada’s radioactive waste handling
(Montreal, Quebec, September 18, 2019) The need for urgent reform of Canada’s approach to radioactive waste has just been confirmed by findings from the global authority on nuclear matters, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which completed an 11-day review mission to Canada on September 13. Canadian civil society groups say the IAEA findings validate their concerns about the substandard radioactive waste disposal plans of a consortium of SNC-Lavalin and two U.S. companies that is being paid close to $1 billion annually by the Government of Canada to deal with $8 billion worth of federal radioactive waste liabilities.
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The IAEA mission was conducted by a 24-member team including 20 senior regulatory experts from 17 countries. An IAEA press release says the team’s final report will recommend that “The Government of Canada enhance the policy and strategy for radioactive waste management,” and that “The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission should consider better aligning its radiation protection requirements with IAEA safety standards”.
“These recommendations are unprecedented from the explicitly pro-nuclear IAEA that is usually very accommodating to member states such as Canada”, said Dr. Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility. “We consider IAEA standards to be minimum standards that responsible nations should strive to exceed. For the IAEA to find the Federal Government and CNSC lacking, is a major red flag that should concern all Canadians.”
The review mission was conducted at the request of the Government of Canada, says the IAEA, but it also follows a public letter to the IAEA director general requesting an investigation into Canada’s radioactive waste polices and practices, in April of 2018. The letter’s signatories included five First Nations and 40 civil society groups.
Edwards and representatives of many other groups have charged that the Federal Government’s failure to develop policies and strategies for radioactive waste has given the SNC-Lavalin consortium free rein to deal with Canada’s $8 billion radioactive waste legacy that is spread across the provinces of Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec. They point out that the resulting plans to pour concrete over old nuclear reactors and dump radioactive waste beside drinking water sources fall far short of international safety standards.
“The Government of Canada is not just putting us all at risk by pouring money into bad nuclear waste projects, it is missing a golden opportunity to develop leadership and excellence in radioactive waste management on a global scale”, according to Johanna Echlin of the Old Fort William (Quebec) Cottagers’ Association. “We call upon all media, the public and candidates in the upcoming election to press for an urgent reform of Canada’s approach to radioactive waste matters” she said. “Canada must take this opportunity to not just meet but exceed IAEA standards, and ensure the protection of Canadians today, and for centuries to come.”
“This is a tremendous vindication of our concerns about how radioactive waste is being mishandled in Canada” according to Gilles Provost, of the Ralliement contre la pollution radioactive. “We have been telling the Federal Government for years that its radioactive waste policies are inadequate, and now world experts from the IAEA are saying the same thing.”
The IAEA is a United Nations organization that recommends safety standards for nuclear plants and nuclear waste facilities; it has 171 member states worldwide. It also administers an international convention on the management of radioactive waste to which Canada is a party.
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Guess who’s managing our radioactivity!
Here’s that name again: “SNC Lavalin.” We heard about it for months before the Canadian election, but only as something the prime minister tried to protect (presumably as a way to sustain jobs in Quebcc). But it ought to be a bigger story that this company is managing Canada’s radioactive risks.
What was that about lasers again, please?
Has there been further research into using high-power lasers to transmute radioactive waste? An article published in 2003 by New Scientist indicated that the Vulcan Laser at the University of Strathclyde had begun researching ways to transmute radioactive waste to reduce its half-lives. Of interest was Iodine 129 with a half-live of 15.7 million years which could be transmuted to Iodine 128 with a half-life of 25 minutes. The laser is the size of a “small hotel” and a million billion watts – producing gamma radiation. One of the concerns is producing enough energy to use the laser to transmute the waste – which could require an entire power plant of its own to process the waste product from another. There would additionally be a surge of radioactivity during the transmutation process.
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One of the 2018 Nobel Laureates — Dr. Gerard Mourou — has additionally been researching the use of high-powered lasers to transmute radioactive waste. This has been of interest to multiple nations — such as France — where over 70% of its energy is produced from nuclear reactors.
2003 Article: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4056-giant-laser-transmutes-nuclear-waste/
Articles on Gerard Mourou: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2019-nuclear-waste-storage-france/ and https://futurism.com/the-byte/nobel-prize-lasers-destroy-nuclear-waste
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Suppose a Tsunami Hits the Dome
What would happen if a tsunami hits the Cactus / Runit Dome in the Marshall Islands? In Dr. Spencer’s class on public health in the nuclear age – it was indicated that this dome was already falling apart – and that radiation levels outside the dome were equal to or greater than those inside the dome. For the unfamiliar – the dome was built in the 1970s by the United Stated Department of Energy in attempts to contain radioactive debris from their decades of nuclear testing on the atolls of the Marshall Islands.
There has been a cohort lasting decades from the researchers and other US government employees involved in these tests, called Operation Crosswords. Essentially, large chunks of radioactive concrete, metal, etc. were thrown in a crater and covered in a concrete dome. Unfortunately, the soil on atolls is porous and plans to put a more solid bottom on the dome were not followed, due to budgetary concerns. If a tsunami – say from the overdue 8-9.0 + earthquake on the eastern Pacific – hits this dome – would it launch radioactive materials into the ocean currents? What are the implications if plutonium – a side effect of which is blindness, cancers, etc. – hits the currents that lead into south-east Asia’s manufacturing districts? It would depend on the trajectory of the hypothetical tsunami – as to whether the radioactive materials would hit the Americas or Asia first. Very alarming stuff to consider! Is this a greater risk than the radioactive materials circulating from Fukushima?
What happened to the workers who built the damn thing? They must have been driving bulldozers over the whole radioactive mess. Do their grandchildren have cancer now?
Pickering’s Spent Fuel Bundles
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More than half the waste that Ontario Power Generation has been quietly piling up at Pickering nuclear plant is kept in open water pools. One of the biggest concerns during the Fukushima nuclear disaster was the possibility of a “pool fire” if the zircaloy cladding on spent fuel bundles combusted. All of Tokyo would have needed to be evacuated if a narrowly avoided pool fire had happened. Pickering’s fuel has the same cladding, except Pickering is 10 times closer to downtown Toronto than Fukushima is from Tokyo.”
https://thebulletin.ca/pickering-nuclears-huge-radioactive-waste-problem/
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Buried near Port Hope
“Share this:
The Port Hope Area Initiative (PHAI) represents the Government of Canada’s commitment to the cleanup and safe, local, long-term management of historic low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) in two Southern Ontario municipalities – Port Hope and Clarington. The waste is the result of radium and uranium processing in Port Hope between 1933 and 1988 by the former Crown corporation Eldorado Nuclear Limited and its private-sector predecessors.
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The PHAI is based on community-recommended solutions for the cleanup and safe long-term management of approximately 1.7 million cubic metres of LLRW. It is currently one of Canada’s largest environmental remediation projects.”
What are the risks of this contaminating adjacent farmlands? It is a few kilometers south of Newtonville, Ontario – near the lakeshore. Additionally, what are the chances of it contaminating the lake – due to erosion rates?
More information can be found here: https://www.cnl.ca/en/home/environmental-stewardship/phai.aspx
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Nuclear Power Plants Without Valid Licenses!
An alarming article from Sophia Ankel and Alexandra Hilpert at Business Insider (25 August 2019) on the state of environmental licenses and nuclear reactors in the European Union.
“There are 18 active nuclear power plants currently operating without a valid license in the European Union, according to a report seen by Business Insider.
Many of the power plants should have already been subject to an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA),
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according to a report put together by Germany’s Green Party member and nuclear expert Sylvia Kotting-Uhl.
An EIA aims to identify the environmental consequences of major projects, such as the construction of an airport, and has proposed some lesser damaging alternatives.
Some of the EU countries running the illegal power plants include the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Belgium, Finland, the UK, Sweden, and Switzerland.
The number does not take into account the 34 other illegal nuclear power plants in neighboring European countries that aren’t part of the EU.”
Link: https://www.businessinsider.com/18-nuclear-reactors-in-the-eu-are-currently-operating-illegally-2019-8
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How is it possible for 18 nuclear power plants to be operating without a valid license? Good grief!
Some Reactors are Approved Without a License
That article is presumably referring to a specific class of license – issued around notions of environmental assessments/impacts for the reactor sites.
The license is called an EIA: “An EIA aims to identify the environmental consequences of major projects, such as the construction of an airport, and has proposed some lesser damaging alternatives.” [and] “The UN Committee responsible for these investigations is currently examining several nuclear reactors which are said to have been approved in Europe without an EIA.”
Beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s, research was conducted in Europe in relation to nuclear powered pacemakers. One such model had a plutonium RTG battery. Would folks that had these implanted be required to be buried in a lead-lined coffin, like Marie Skłodowska-Curie?
Where does Radioactive Scrap Metal Go?
Has anyone considered the role of radioactive scrap metal inadvertently incorporated into the recycling industry? I have heard this is an issue in Eastern Europe and former Soviet Bloc areas. Of particular concern was the incorporation of mildly radioactive materials into the metal being re-purposed for built materials. Having sections of a structural support beam leaching radioactivity would potentially cause structural failure due to neutron embrittlement, irregular atomic and molecular structure, etc.
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There was a large IAEA report (about 400 pages) from a conference in Europe several years ago around this. Several borders are setting up radioactive check-points to check for this material on train and truck shipments of scrap metal. One source known to be a problem are RTGs (radioisotope thermoelectric generators) – a class of small reactors used to power remote radio and weather beacons in Soviet times. These reactors use the heat from radioactive decay to power their components vs. moving parts such as in a CANDU reactor. The casing for these RTGs have about 500kg of metal – which make them targets for scrap harvesters.
An instance in remote Georgia saw a village irradiated with Strontium-90 (I think) after one was found in the mountain woods, harvested, and someone used the fuel source for cooking – before cracking it open. Other sources of radioactive material in scrap metal are old road markers – as for several years it appeared that radium paints were used to mark the edges of roads in certain regions. Other concerns regarding radioactive material getting into scrap metal are the prevalence of recycled materials in food containers – such as food cans, pop cans, etc. which are made from recycled metal. Not good if some radioactive stuff gets mixed into this!
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Correction and clarification: The Georgia incident was in the village of Lia or Liya (Tsalenjikha region) and was predominantly woodcutters that were exposed – among others in the village. This was in December 2001. Two were hospitalized for months. The strontium-90 core of these devices can provide a fatal dose of radiation in approximately two minutes. Eight known RTGs were installed in Georgia in the 1980s in relation to radio relay sites for hydroelectric projects, of which two are presently missing. Allegedly the strontium-90 cores are in ceramic form, rendering it difficult for re-use in terrorism-related purposes. As of 2002, there was a bounty of $10 000 for each of the missing RTGs – as they were to be transported to Turkey. It is likely that this plan has since been cancelled.
Radioactive steel must not be reused
Yes, here in Canada, Bruce Power Corporation, the largest collection of reactors in the world were going to send radioactive steel from their plant on Lake Huron down the Great Lakes, St. Lawrence River to Sweden to be reused. This was luckily stopped.
Is Grand Central Station Radioactive?
Another source of radiation exposure is the built materials of some older buildings. One that stands out in my mind is Grand Central Station in New York City. The granite materials used in its constructions are mildly radioactive. Several reports came out years ago, calculating the dose exposure of employees that worked in the station. Of note were shoe-shine boys and janitors. The walls leach radioactivity in that building, though it’s significantly less radioactivity than a Chernobyl-like event.
https://io9.gizmodo.com/grand-central-station-is-radioactive-1689028425
That being said, this could be an “urban legend” – it would be fascinating to see some official research on the topic. Are there other built materials leaching radioactivity?
Whatever Happened to those Old Uranium Mines?
Has anyone looked into the environmental exposure risks from the old uranium mines globally? A number of them began in the early 20th century and continued through the late 20th century. Some were simply flooded if they were shut down before World War 2. Could this cause leaching into the surrounding environment?
One horrifying report came out of the Northwest Territories in Canada where one of the large uranium (former pitchblende) mines used for the Manhattan Project was employing First Nations individuals to move the ore across the lake to a site where it was to be refined then shipped south. Many of these individuals developed severe forms of lung and other cancers decades later as they were inhaling radioactive particulate dust for months (if not years) on end. There were additional reports that the individuals were using old ore sacks for housing (i.e. sewn into tents) and bedding in harsher weather – increasing the radioactive dose exposure. Alarming stuff!
I Favor Small Modular Reactors, But…
Nuclear energy is a subject i am deeply concerned with. Why? because my mother died of cancer when i was 16 years old. She was sick for 6 years of my life and many others I have known have had cancer including my aunt and uncle who both died of it in different forms. I think Nuclear Energy is extremely important and needs to be utilized in a way that will safeguard against accidents and radiation leakage.
I am all for SMR’s(small modular reactors) but they need to be monitored properly. I believe the accident at chalk river might have been the factor responsible for my moms cancer, as we did a lot of traveling around Ontario and close to the accident site. My hope is responsible development of the technology and its regulated use will continue to be done but we need a strong education system that is being undermined by social conflict created by communication technologies leading to disruptions in learning and interacting.
Small Modular Nuclear Reactors Are Radioactive!
Dear Richard:
SMNR still require enriched uranium and produce plutonium that can be used for making nuclear weapons. They also produce nuclear radioactive waste that we haven’t found a solution over the last 70+ years. The German KKK study found an increased risk of leukemias in children less than 5 years of age who grew up within 5 km of nuclear power reactors. This could also have a bearing on SMNR.
Richard Denton, MD
Canadian Plans for Nuclear Power Emergency
Canada does have some plans in place for situations where a leak or other safety emergency occurred at a nuclear power plant. For example, here is a link to the plans for intervening if something bad happens in the Point Lepreau reactor. (See a photo of the reactor on the attached PDF.)
https://www2.gnb.ca/content/dam/gnb/Departments/ps-sp/pdf/emo/Nuclear/PointLepreau-NOEM.pdf
Ohio Governor Signs Coal and Nuclear Bailout at Expense of Renewable Energy
By Dan Gearino | Jul 26, 2019
In a year when several states have taken big steps to embrace a future that runs on renewable energy, Ohio is taking a leap in the opposite direction.
The Ohio legislature passed a measure Tuesday that cuts renewable energy and energy efficiency programs while adding subsidies for nuclear and coal-fired power plants—a policy cocktail that opponents say is backward-looking and harmful to the economy, consumers and the environment.
Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, signed the bill into law within hours.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/23072019/ohio-coal-nuclear-bailout-law-signed-cuts-renewable-energy-efficiency-programs-governor-dewine
Interesting that he identifies two other southern “red” states that are more advanced than Ohio. I read in the NY Times that now the majority of Republicans acknowledge that climate change is real. If so, presumably the red states will start acting smarter. But how soon?
A False Dilemma? Let’s Hope So
Well, yes, Lori, but not necessarily in a way preferred by most of the people who endorse the Platform for Survival. If they switch to worrying about climate change, they may favor a solution based on increasing the use of nuclear power, which a lot of us abhor. At least that is the case with John Barrosso, a Republican Congressman from Wyoming, who had fought against climate change action. Now he wants to promote nuclear power. Is that progress? (I’m not sure.)
Gigantic, mysterious radiation leak traced to facility in Russia
By Ruby Prosser Scully . TECHNOLOGY July 29, 2019
The source of a gigantic, mysterious leak of radioactive material that swept across Europe in 2017 has been traced to a Russian nuclear facility, which appears to have been preparing materials for experiments in Italy.
The leak released up to 100 times the amount of radiation into the atmosphere that the Fukushima disaster did. Italian scientists were the first to raise the alarm on 2 October, when they noticed a burst of the radioactive ruthenium-106 in the atmosphere. This was quickly corroborated by other monitoring laboratories across Europe.
Georg Steinhauser at Leibniz University Hannover in Germany says he was “stunned” when he first noticed the event. Routine surveillance detects several radiation leaks each year, mostly of extremely low levels of radionuclides used in medicine. But this event was different.
“The ruthenium-106 was one of a kind. We had never measured anything like this before,” says Steinhauser. Even so, the radiation level wasn’t high enough to impact human health in Europe, although exposure closer to the site of release would have been far greater.
Read more: HBO’s Chernobyl drama highlights the human cost of nuclear catastrophe
The Institute for Radioprotection and Nuclear Security in Paris soon concluded that the most probable source of the leak was between the Volga river and Ural mountains in Russia. This is where Russia’s Mayak facility is located. The site, which includes a plant that processes spent nuclear fuel, suffered the world’s third most serious nuclear accident in 1957.
At the time of the 2017 leak, Russian officials denied the possibility of the facility being the source, saying there were no radioactive ruthenium traces in the surrounding soil. Instead, they suggested the source may have been a radionuclide battery from a satellite burning up during re-entry into the atmosphere.
Steinhauser and his colleagues decided to investigate more thoroughly by forensically analysing 1300 measurements from hundreds of monitoring stations across Europe. They found that radiation levels in the atmosphere were between 30 and 100 times higher than those measured after Fukushima. “This was indeed quite alarming,” says Steinhauser.
Eliminate the impossible
The team excluded Romania as the source of the accident, despite the country’s high radiation levels. Each station in the country detected the radioactive plume simultaneously, which indicated the source was far enough away for it to have grown to the width of Romania.
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They also excluded a satellite as the cause because space organisations didn’t report any missing at the time. The pattern of radiation through the atmosphere didn’t match the spread of radiation from a satellite’s reentry either.
Combining these findings with information on air movements and concentration levels from monitoring data, the team found clear evidence that the release happened in the Southern Urals, which is where the Mayak nuclear facility is located.
The leak was unusual because the release was limited to radioactive ruthenium. “If there is a reactor accident, one would expect the release of radioactive isotopes of many different elements,” says Steinhauser. Exactly why such a specific element was released remained a mystery until Steinhauser learned that an Italian nuclear research facility had ordered a consignment of cerium-144 from Mayak before the incident. “There are several indications that the release of ruthenium-106 was linked to this order,” he says.
Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1907571116
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Christian Forum in Japan Urges Ending Nuclear Power
Voices of Fukushima power plant explosion victims strengthen call to ban nuclear energy
By Rachel Farmer, Anglican Communion News
Posted on July 28, 2019 by beyondnuclearinternational
Japanese parish priests shared stories of suffering from victims of the Fukushima nuclear disaster at a May 2019 International Forum for a Nuclear-Free World held in Sendai, Japan. A joint statement from the forum, issued in July 2019, strengthens the call for a worldwide ban on nuclear energy and encourages churches to join in the campaign.
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The statement – Affirming the Preciousness of Life, in Order that Life may be Lived – For a World Free of Nuclear Power – noted that “We believe that it is highly important that this issue of nuclear power generation be considered from the perspective of the dignity of life.” The statement went on to point out the dangers of continued radioactive waste production and the connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons — “two sides of a single coin.” It recommended that “No longer should we continue as a society with the economic priority of reliance upon nuclear power generation.”
The forum, organised by the Nippon Sei Ko Kai (NSKK) – the Anglican Communion in Japan – follows the NSKKs General Synod resolution in 2012 calling for an end to nuclear power plants and activities to help the world go nuclear free.
The disaster in 2011 followed a massive earthquake and tsunami which caused a number of explosions in the town’s coastal nuclear power station and led to widespread radioactive contamination and serious health and environmental effects. The Chair of the forum’s organising committee, Kiyosumi Hasegawa, said: “We have yet to see an end to the damage done to the people and natural environment by the meltdown of TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. I do think this man-made disaster will haunt countless people for years to come. We still see numerous people who wish to go back to their hometowns but are unable to. We also have people who have given up on ever going home.”
One pastor, Dr Naoya Kawakami, whose church was affected by the tsunami and is the General Secretary of the Sendai Christian Alliance Disaster Relief Network, Touhoku HELP, explained how he had supported sufferers in the aftermath and heard from priests supporting the survivors. He said: “I have been more than 700 times to meet with more than 180 mothers and about 20 fathers, all of whom have seen abnormalities in their children since 2011. . . Thyroid cancer has been found in more than 273 children and many mothers are in deep anxiety.
“The more the situation worsens, the more pastors become aware of their important role. The role is to witness . . . pastors who have stayed in Fukushima with the ‘voiceless survivors’ are showing us the church as the body of Jesus’s resurrection, with wounds and weakness . . . sufferers are usually in voiceless agony and most people never hear them.”
The forum was attended by bishops, clergy and lay representatives from each diocese, together with representatives from the US-based Episcopal Church, USPG, the Episcopal Church of the Philippines, the Diocese of Taiwan, the Anglican Church of Korea, and also ecumenical guests. International experts took part, along with local clergy who shared individual stories from those directly affected by the disaster.
Keynote lecturer Prof Dr Miranda Schreurs, from the Technische Universität Münchenin Germany, launched the forum at Tohoku Diocese’s Cathedral, Sendai Christ Church. The professor currently serves as a member of the Ethic Commission for Safe Energy Supply and significantly influenced Germany’s nuclear free energy policy. Other speakers included the Bishop of Taiwan, David Jun Hsin Lai, and Amos Kim Kisuk from the Anglican Church of Korea.
During the week delegates from outside Japan visited sites and towns near the nuclear power plant. They also visited St John’s Church Isoyama and “Inori no Ie” (House of Prayer) in Shinchi, Fukushima, to offer prayers for all the victims of the disaster.
The NSKK Partners-in-Mission Secretary, Paul Tolhurst, said the visit to Fukushima had brought home the reality of the situation for local people. “Driving past the power station and seeing the ghost town around us as the Geiger counter reading kept going up is something I won’t forget”, he said. “It was like the town time forgot – they still seem to be living the incident, while the rest of Japan has moved on.”
Arguing for an end to nuclear power, NSKK priest John Makito Aizawa said: “Both religiously and ethically, we cannot allow nuclear power plants to continue running. They produce deadly waste, which we have no way of processing into something safe.
“More than 100,000 years are necessary for the radiation of such deadly waste to diminish to the level that it was in the original uranium. This alone is a strong enough reason to prohibit nuclear power plants. Insistence on restarting nuclear power plants seems to come from the insistence on getting more and more money and profit.”
He added: “I am no scientist or engineer of nuclear power generation. I am no expert. Still, as Christians, and to live as humans, I am certain this is an issue we cannot afford to ignore.”
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This article first appeared on Anglican Communion News Service and is republished with kind permission and with an update to include the statement.
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How can anyone doubt it when they are DOING it?
https://carbonengineering.com/about-dac/
Float Solar Panels on Islands
Here is a strange proposal. Build thousands of islands covered with solar panels. Use the electricity to produce hydrogen and capture the CO 2, then make fuel from it. Hmmm.
Cancer risk
National Cancer Institute:
“Accidents at Nuclear Power Plants and Cancer Risk”
If the fuel and surrounding containment structures are severely damaged, radioactive materials and ionizing radiation may be released, potentially posing a health risk for people. The actual risk depends on several factors:
The specific radioactive materials, or isotopes, released, and the quantities released.
How a person comes into contact with the released radioactive materials (such as through contaminated food, water, air, or on the skin).
The person’s age (those exposed at younger ages are generally at higher risk).
The duration and amount of the exposure.
More information about the health effects of ionizing radiation exposure is available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Environmental Protection Agency.
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The radioactive isotopes released in nuclear power plant accidents include I-131 and Cs-137. In the most severe kinds of accidents, such as the Chernobyl accident in 1986, other dangerous radioactive isotopes, such as strontium-90 (Sr-90) and plutonium-239, may also be released.
Human exposure to I-131 released from nuclear power plant accidents comes mainly from consuming contaminated water, milk, or foods. People may also be exposed by breathing dust particles in the air that are contaminated with I-131.
https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/radiation/nuclear-accidents-fact-sheet
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More dosimeters, please!
There should be more dosimeters available in places where radiation exposure might take place.
The Dome is Leaking. Now what?
By Trevor Nace May 27, 2019, Forbes
“Fears Grow That ‘Nuclear Coffin’ Is Leaking Waste Into The Pacific”
Rising sea level, soil shifting, and storms have all caused new concern over the integrity of the “nuclear coffin” and its ability to contain radioactive waste. The dome is reportedly cracking and the local government fears the next big storm may split the concrete dome apart. In addition, groundwater models suggest that seawater is almost certainly accessing the crater. However, it is unclear how much nuclear waste is seeping from the unlined crater bottom into the Pacific Ocean and groundwater aquifers.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2019/05/27/fears-grow-that-nuclear-coffin-is-leaking-waste-into-the-pacific/#14f2ec397073
Isn’t there any kind of international law that can be invoked to require the US to repair this? On the other hand, what can be done to repair it? Is there any feasible solution? Maybe just a harder shell, but that is only temporary.
Cracks in the Runit Dome
“There Is A Giant Nuclear Ticking Time Bomb Waiting To Blow In The Middle Of The Pacific Ocean”
By Noelle Talmon Ranker
A 2013 inspection revealed that the Runit dome is decaying. The groundwater is radioactive, and sand has penetrated the structure. There are also several cracks on the dome, and vines are growing inside the crevices. If all this organic matter is penetrating the structure so easily, what of the radioactivity that it conceals? Eventually, the dome and the land around it could be underwater, or it will be destroyed by storms. Subsequently, radioactive material will leech into the ocean.
Officials Aren’t Worried About The Dome Experiencing “Catastrophic Failure” Because The Surrounding Area Is Already So Radioactive.
The Nuclear Claims Tribunal was developed in 1998, and the group determined that the United States owed the people of Enewetak approximately $244 million in compensation for the havoc the toxic waste wreaked on their lives. The nuclear testing resulted in people losing their homes as well as their jobs. And because the area is so contaminated, they are unable to export fish and other products as per the US Department of Energy.
The locals live on a little bit of money they receive from a US trust fund, but many are barely able to support themselves.
https://www.ranker.com/list/runit-dome-nuclear-waste-storage-leaking/nicky-benson
Could they take their claim to the World Court or something? Surely there must be a way for those people to get justice!
Coleen Jose, Kim Wall and Jan Hendrik Hinzel July 3, 2-15
“This dome in the Pacific houses tons of radioactive waste – and it’s leaking,”
The Runit Dome in the Marshall Islands is a hulking legacy of years of US nuclear testing. Now locals and scientists are warning that rising sea levels caused by climate change could cause 111,000 cubic yards of debris to spill into the ocean.
In total, 67 nuclear and atmospheric bombs were detonated on Enewetak and Bikini between 1946 and 1958 – an explosive yield equivalent to 1.6 Hiroshima bombs detonated every day over the course of 12 years.
The detonations blanketed the islands with irradiated debris, including Plutonium-239, When the testing came to an end, the US Defence Nuclear Agency (DNA) carried out an eight-year cleanup, but Congress refused to fund a comprehensive decontamination programme to make the entire atoll fit for human settlement again.
In the end, US servicemen simply scraped off the islands’ contaminated topsoil and mixed it with radioactive debris. The resulting radioactive slurry was then dumped in an unlined 350-foot crater on Runit Island’s northern tip, and sealed under 358 concrete panels.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/03/runit-dome-pacific-radioactive-waste
Scary. Apparently the soil outside and even in the ocean around it is also highly radioactive now.
Mark Abadi Jun. 16, 2016, Busienss Insider
“The US dropped 67 nuclear bombs on this tiny island nation — and now it’s far more radioactive than we thought”
Between 1946 and 1958, the US tested 67 nuclear weapons on the Marshall Islands, a chain of atolls in the Pacific Ocean with a population of just 52,000.
The most famous test, the “Bravo shot,” was dropped on Bikini Atoll in 1954 and was 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
The researchers discovered that radioactive materials on Bikini Atoll are producing 184 millirems of radiation a year — almost double the safety standard of 100 set by the US and the Marshall Islands. Some parts of the region hit a whopping 639 millirems per year.
https://www.businessinsider.com/marshall-islands-nuclear-bombs-radiation-2016-6
Charles Digges Published on October 2, 2017
“The worst nuclear disaster you’ve never heard of celebrates its 60th birthday”
September 29, 60 years ago, a tank containing nuclear weapons waste exploded on the grounds of the Mayak Chemical Combine, Russia’s primary spent nuclear fuel reprocessing center, which is still in operation.
The fallout coated more than 200 towns and villages and exposed 272,000 people, a small portion of which were quietly evacuated over the subsequent two years, to radiation.
Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom, meanwhile refuses to respond to specific charges of ongoing dumps, instead issuing general statements that Mayak operates within “environmental guidelines” and that the Techa complies with “sanitary standards.” Indeed, because the river is already so contaminated, establishing further contamination might seem merely academic.
Those who live along the river, they say, have cancer at rates 3.6 times higher than the national average, and suffer 25 times more from incidence of birth defects than in other places in the country. Miscarriages continue to climb, and children carried to term are born with malformed limbs and organs. Many of the remaining adults suffer from lymph node swelling so severe that their words are unintelligible to visiting physicians. The strontium 90 flowing through the river, the doctors have concluded, has settled into the population’s bones.
https://bellona.org/news/nuclear-issues/2017-10-the-worst-nuclear-disaster-youve-never-heard-of-celebrates-its-60th-birthday
by Thomas Rabl , Arcadia, 2012, no. 20-
Arcadia Collection:
Disaster Histories
29 September 1957, residents of the Chelyabinsk district in the Southern Urals noticed unusual bluish-violet colors in the sky. The regional press speculated about polar lights appearing exceptionally far south. However, within a few days, a slew of government activity became evident around the military area that housed the nuclear facility “Mayak.” Peasants were required to slaughter their livestock, bury their crops and plow their farmland. More than 20 villages, comprising over 11,000 people, were evacuated and completely demolished. No official statement was given about any of these orders, but everybody could figure out for themselves that a major accident had happened at “Mayak.”
As a result of disregarding basic safety standards, 17,245 workers received radiation overdoses between 1948 and 1958. Dumping of radioactive waste into the nearby river from 1949 to 1952 caused several breakouts of radiation sickness in villages downstream. Residents of the area were thus familiar with the invisible dangers coming from the secret site.
The Western world, though, came to hear about it only in 1976, when Soviet emigrant Zhores Medvedev first revealed some facts about the catastrophe. The CIA had known about it long before.
http://www.environmentandsociety.org/arcadia/nuclear-disaster-kyshtym-1957-and-politics-cold-war
Joseph Y Allen, MD
Erin E Endom, MD , UpToDate
“Management of radiation exposure in children following a nuclear disaster”
The management of radiation injury in children and clinical features and management in adults are discussed separately. (See “Management of radiation exposure in children following a nuclear disaster” and “Biology and clinical features of radiation injury in adults” and “Treatment of radiation injury in the adult”.)
https://www.uptodate.com/contents/management-of-radiation-exposure-in-children-following-a-nuclear-disaster
MARIA TEMMING , Jan 14, 2019. Science news.
“Your phone could reveal your radiation exposure afgter a nuclear disaster.”
In the event of a nuclear attack or accident, personal electronics could be repurposed as radiation detectors.
A ceramic insulator found in many devices, such as cell phones and fitness trackers, gives off a glow under high heat that reveals its past nuclear radiation exposure, researchers report in the February Radiation Measurements. That insight may allow experts to gauge someone’s radiation dose in a matter of hours, whereas typical blood tests can take weeks.
When nuclear radiation floods the ceramic in electronic components called surface mount resistors, the radiation rearranges the distribution of electrons in defects in the ceramic’s crystalline structure. If heated to hundreds of degrees Celsius, the ceramic glows, and the wavelengths of light that make up that luminescence reveal the material’s electron distribution. From there, researchers can determine the dose of radiation that caused the material’s electron reshuffling. But the machine used to measure the ceramic’s luminescent glow costs about $150,000, so people in areas affected by nuclear disasters would have to send their personal electronics to specialized facilities for testing.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/phones-reveal-radiation-exposure-after-nuclear-disaster
Claire Leppold et al.
“Public health after a nuclear disaster: beyond radiation risks”. 30 August 2016.
Although numerous studies have been published, the health risks of radiation are still not well understood, and controversy is abundant even within the realms of scientific research. No deaths or acute health effects related to radiation exposure were reported in the general public immediately after the disaster.1 In October 2015, the results of two studies concerning the children of Fukushima were reported within two days of each other; one found no detectable internal radiation contamination,2 while the other found an increased risk of thyroid cancer. .3 After the catastrophic nuclear accident in April 1986 in the city of Chernobyl in Ukraine, it was found that the increased mental health burden was the most severe of any of the post-disaster public health problems.1Fukushima appears to be facing a similar situation.1 In addition to its impact on mental health, social disruption can be seen as a risk factor for physiological disease.
Unsurprisingly, an increase in noncommunicable disease risks, such as high blood glucose levels and hyperlipidaemia, have been found in Fukushima,
Foods grown in a person’s own garden are consumed at the individual’s own risk, and can go through radiation screening or not depending on personal choice. However, there is no explicit guidance about what should or should not be done in daily life. It is therefore unsurprising that medical professionals do not yet agree on how to advise older patients about continuing or abandoning old ways of living,
https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/94/11/15-168187/en/
Background:
To facilitate the eventual deployment of Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMNRs), the nuclear industry and its regulator, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), are lobbying to have SMNRs exempted from any form of public environmental assessment process. The less public attention, the better.
The Vice-chair of the Canadian Senate Committee examining the proposed law that is designed to govern questions of environmental assessment is also on the Board of “Canada Carbon” — a company planning to mine a deposit of exceptionally pure graphite in Quebec.
Very pure graphite is required for some types of nuclear reactors. Such high quality graphite is only required in nuclear reactors — there is no other use of graphite that necessitates such a near-total lack of impurities,
It seems a clear case of conflict of interest.
When Enrico Fermi achieved the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in Chicago, he used graphite. When the US Army built reactors at Hanford to produce plutonium for bombs, they used graphite. The Windscale nuclear reactor in Northern England required graphite, as did the Chernobyl reactor that melted down in 1986. (The Windscale reactor underwent a major nuclear accident in 1957 that spread radioactivity all over Northern Europe.)
Almost all commercial power reactors require a moderator to slow down the very fast-moving neutrons that are needed to keep the nuclear chain reaction going. If a neutron bounces off other atoms without being absorbed, it loses momentum and thereby moderates its speed. The best moderators are (1) heavy water; (2) graphite; (3) ordinary water, called “light water”.
A moderator must be free of impurities that absorb neutrons, for that would diminish the number of neutrons available for nuclear fission. Such a loss of neutrons is clearly undesirable.
Some nuclear reactors, like the Canadian CANDU design, use heavy water as moderator. Others, like the British fleet of 26 MAGNOX reactors and 14 Advanced Gas-Cooled reactors, use graphite as moderator. The Russian fleet of RBMK reactors, 11 of which were still operating in 2017, also used graphite for this purpose. Most other reactors, including the American and French designs, use ordinary water, called “light water”, as a moderator.
Very pure graphite can be used also as a “neutron reflector” — by bouncing escaping neutrons back into the core of the reactor. This allows a smaller volume of nuclear fuel to undergo more fissions than would otherwise be the case. Just as reflecting mirrors can magnify the light given off by a candle, so a neutron reflector can magnify the energy produced by a given amount of nuclear fuel.
The nuclear industry is currently fighting a losing battle in North America and Western Europe. Old reactors are being shut down and new ones are not being built. In a desperate effort to keep the industry afloat, nuclear proponents are seeking public subsidies to create a new generation of “Small Modular Nuclear Reactors” (SMNRs) that can be built in a factory and transported to various locations, some of them small and isolated communities.
To reduce the size of the reactor, a neutron reflector is helpful. To minimize the threat of radioactive spills, a solid moderator may be preferred to a liquid one. For certain SMNR designs, pure graphite will be in demand — if the dreams of the nuclear industry are ever to succeed.